{"id":2041,"date":"2012-05-21T10:13:03","date_gmt":"2012-05-21T14:13:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/?p=2041"},"modified":"2012-05-21T10:16:35","modified_gmt":"2012-05-21T14:16:35","slug":"the-end-of-fish-in-one-chart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/2012\/05\/the-end-of-fish-in-one-chart\/","title":{"rendered":"The end of fish, in one chart"},"content":{"rendered":"

Between 1950 and 2006, the WWF report notes, the world\u2019s annual fishing haul more than quadrupled, from 19 million tons to 87 million tons. New technology \u2014 from deep-sea trawling to long-lining \u2014 has helped the fishing industry harvest areas that were once inaccessible. But the growth of intensive fishing also means that larger and larger swaths of the ocean are in danger of being depleted.<\/p>\n

Daniel Pauly, a professor of fisheries at the University of British Columbia, has dubbed this situation \u201cThe End of Fish.\u201d He points out that in the past 50 years, the populations of many large commercial fish such as bluefin tuna and cod have utterly collapsed, in some cases shrinking more than 90 percent (see the chart).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0Indeed, there\u2019s some evidence that we\u2019ve already hit \u201cpeak fish.\u201d World fish production seems to have reached its zenith back in the 1980s, when the global catch was higher than it is today. And, according to one recent study in the journal Science, commercial fish stocks are on pace for total \u201ccollapse\u201d by 2048 \u2014 meaning that they\u2019ll produce less than 10 percent of their peak catch. On the other hand, many of those fish-depleted areas will be overrun by jellyfish, which is good news for anyone who enjoys a good blob sandwich.<\/p>\n

The full WWF report<\/a> (PDF), meanwhile, is chock full of brightly colored graphs charting the decline of wildlife across the globe. All told, global vertebrate populations have declined by some 30 percent since 1970. But that number masks a lot of variation. Wildlife actually appears to be recovering in the temperate areas, while it\u2019s utterly collapsing in the tropics. (It seems there have been some modest conservation successes in the wealthier temperate regions \u2014 the European otter is staging an impressive comeback, for instance.)<\/p>\n

The big thing the WWF paper emphasizes, however, is that human consumption patterns are currently unsustainable. We\u2019re essentially consuming the equivalent of one and a half Earths each year.<\/p>\n

SOURCE<\/strong> \u00a0The end of fish, in one chart – The Washington Post<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Between 1950 and 2006, the WWF report notes, the world\u2019s annual fishing haul more than quadrupled, from 19 million tons to 87 million tons. New technology \u2014 from deep-sea trawling to long-lining \u2014 has helped the fishing industry harvest areas that were once inaccessible. But the growth of intensive fishing also means that larger and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[257,22,18],"tags":[1202,910,291,1203],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2041"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2041"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2041\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2050,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2041\/revisions\/2050"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}