1998 Year of the Ocean Ocean Living Resources 



The constituencies supporting fish conservation have grown tremendously in recent 

 years. Scientists and managers who had predicted and tried to stop calamities such as the New 

 England groundfish collapse were joined by environmentalists, who saw the connections 

 between protecting endangered and threatened marine mammals and fishing operations. The 

 decline of New England's groundfish fishery finally served as the wake up call — to managers 

 and fishermen, as well as conservationists — who all pressed for reform in fishery management. 



It is now recognized that fishing can and already has had profound effects on marine fish 

 populations. Underscoring the issue, the National Research Council reported in 1995 that fishing 

 activity has affected "... virtually every habitat except the deepest sea floors. Even with 

 management practices now in place, fisheries have major impacts on ocean environments, 

 ranging from direct harvest to bycatch effects, habitat destruction, genetic changes, and food web 

 changes" (NRC 1995). 



Fishing affects marine living resources both directly and indirectly. The principal direct 

 impact is taking out more fish than the populations can replace. Indirect impacts include bycatch, 

 the destruction of habitat, and other ecosystem effects that may accompany fishing activities. The 

 most visible attention to overfishing focused on international commercial fisheries, such as those 

 using large-scale driftnets on the high seas, conservation of highly prized fishes that cross 

 boundaries between or among nations and the high seas (known as straddling and highly 

 migratory stocks), and the problem of reflagging vessels to avoid conservafion measures. Several 

 accords reached through the UN have addressed these issues. However, destructive overfishing 

 even occurs in artisanal and small-scale fisheries worldwide, where biomass fishing (using fine- 

 mesh nets to capture all fish species and age classes), blast fishing, poisoning (with cyanide, 

 rotenone, bleach, etc.) deplete stocks and destroy habitats. 



Direct fishing impacts fi-om overfishing 



Although a wide variety of both human-caused and natural factors affect the living 

 resources of the ocean, the most widely studied and probably best understood is resource 

 overuse. Under this broad heading, managers generally agree that the immediate pressure points 

 are overfishing and overcapacity. Overfishing generally refers to harvesting at excessive levels. 

 The term was defined in the latest Sustainable Fisheries Act amendments to the Magnuson- 

 Stevens Act as "a rate or level of fishing mortality that jeopardizes the capacity of a fishery to 

 produce the maximum sustainable yield on a continuing basis." Overcapacity, on the other hand, 

 refers to excessive levels of catching power, usually measured in terms of the number and size of 

 vessels, and the power and technical efficiency of the engines and gear. In other words, 

 overcapacity refers to boats and technology; and overfishing to the impact of the boats and gear 

 on the target fisheries. 



Overfishing and overcapacity reflect fundamental global demographic, economic, and 

 technological trends. Specifically, continuing population growth, increased economic activity, 

 the general trend toward more abundant and protein-rich diets, and the evolution of fish finding 



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