But there is good news for sharks in the cold Southern ocean, where managers have adopted the world's first international shark fishing limit. Shark fishing will be prohibited until we know enough to do it right. What a surprise, fishing is being regulated before fisheries have collapsed.Elsewhere, shark fishing knows few limits, even though sharks are easily overfished. Fueled by intense demand for shark fin soup, fishing often exceeds the reproductive abilities of sharks.
Who needs sharks? We do, if we want to keep ocean ecosystems intact. Sharks play a vital role in keeping coral reefs healthy, and they are vital predators in all of the oceans ecosystems.
If only we could learn to do it right everywhere. Sharks are in trouble around the world, and even in the "advanced" U. S., we have a poor record at preventing overfishing of sharks. Tweet
2 comments:
"What a surprise, fishing is being regulated before fisheries have collapsed".
I hope you are being sarcastic here Mark, and you are not actually unaware enough of fisheries governance practice to be be surprised that most fisheries are in fact regulated.
Trouble is, most fisheries regulations to date have concerned target species. Society is only just getting around to worrying about the effects of fishing on non-target species and the effects of other human impacts on fisheries as a whole.
But - this has already resulted in the ecosystem approach being accepted by fisheries managers as the way to go, and you will find that most future regulation does take into account these broader impacts and influences. In this part of the world anyway.
Thanks Tim. Yes, I know most fisheries are regulated, but are they EFFECTIVELY regulated? It almost seems to be a truism that fisheries are effectively regulated only AFTER they collapse once, or after nearby or related fisheries crash. My comment may be a bit of hyperbole, but I don't think it's fundamentally wrong. Do you want to argue that it's fundamentally wrong?
Mark
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