In the movie 'Seaspiracy' they claim that there will be no more fish left in the oceans by 2048 on current trends. Is that true?
Negative
From 9 verified experts:
8 answered Unlikely or higher
Holden Harris has answered Extremely Unlikely
An expert from University of Florida in Fisheries Sciences, Ecology
The overwhelming consensus in fisheries scientists is that this is not true. It is true that overfishing is an issue for the global environment and food security. Since the mid-1990s, it has been recognized that many fisheries were overexploiting stocks and in decline, and there was near-universal agreement that fishery management systems in almost all countries needed reform. Today, it's likely that 1/3 of the world's fish stocks worldwide are overexploited or depleted [1, 2]. This is certainly an issue that deserves widespread concern.
However, many stocks are also well managed and improving. Hilborn and Ovando (2014) [3] summarize this very well and evidence a few key points we should remember:
It is unfortunate that #Seaspiracy missed an opportunity to make real progress on the important issue of overfishing by disregarding the science on the issue and spreading misinformation. The convenient oversite of not including the many, many success stories of good management guided by science and community (e.g., U.S. fisheries) provides an extremist view of the issue. I also personally know some of the interviewees in the film, who have spent their life work in ocean conservation, and do not deserve the false light cast on to them. This is not how progress is made. I agree with the synopsis of the film by Professor Daniel Pauly, one of the world's leading experts on the issue [5]: "Seaspiracy does more harm than good. It takes the very serious issue of the devastating impact of industrial fisheries on life in the ocean and then undermines it with an avalanche of falsehoods. It also employs questionable interviewing techniques, uses anti-Asian tropes, and blames the ocean conservation community, i.e., the very NGOs trying to fix things, rather than the industrial companies actually causing the problem."
[1] Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. FAO Yearbook: Fishery and Aquaculture Statistics 2007 (FAO, 2009)
[2] Worm, B. et al. Rebuilding global fisheries. Science 325, 578–585 (2009).
[3] Hilborn R. and D. Ovando. Reflections on the success of traditional fisheries management, ICES Journal of Marine Science, Volume 71, Issue 5, July/August 2014, Pages 1040–1046, https://doi.org/10.1093/icesjms/fsu034
Disclosure
I'm a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Florida. I declare no conflicts of interest.
Answered about 4 years ago
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