Was Assistant Minister for Agriculture and Water Resources Anne Ruston right to say that no solely-managed Commonwealth fishery is subject to overfishing?
The oceans are teeming with life and potential – but the high seas are still largely ungoverned.
Les Watling/NOAA
The open oceans are the world’s “wild west”, falling outside any nation’s jurisdiction. UN negotiations are aiming to draft new laws for the high seas.
Fishermen rescued from a boat on which they were trafficked to work.
Pring Samrang/Reuters
Rodolphe Gozlan, Institut de recherche pour le développement (IRD)
A small invasive fish known as the topmouth gudgeon has already wreaked havoc on European species and its arrival to the US and South America is only a matter of time.
Samal, Philippines: protected area to manage fish recovery.
Rare
The combination of local fishing rights with adjacent marine reserves creates incentives to avoid overfishing and could improve nearshore, small-scale fisheries around the world.
Time to get cracking: a Canadian research vessel in the Arctic.
John F. Williams/Office of Naval Research
A melting Arctic means new areas will be open to commercial fishing but scientists – and bordering countries – say they need time to study the ecological and economic risks.
Sardines (Sardinops sagax) in Mexico (Octavio Aburto)
Gulf of California Marine Program - http://gulfprogram.ucsd.edu
Matt Burgess, University of California, Santa Barbara
Spreading fishing pressure evenly across whole marine ecosystems sounds like a great idea. But there’s a hitch – we can’t technologically do it, and even if we could, it would be expensive.
A golden crispy flake and chips is a classic takeaway meal. But is it a sustainable choice?
Travis/Flickr
John Ford, The University of Melbourne y Robert Day, The University of Melbourne
Flake is great with steaming hot chips. But what fish species is it, and is it sustainable? In Australia, it’s mainly gummy shark, which is a sustainable choice. But beware poorly labelled imitations.
Marine parks are valuable tools to help safeguard species such as seagrasses.
AAP Image/James Cook University
Australia’s network of marine parks - a decade in the making and announced in 2012 - haven’t been implemented yet, and the Abbott government has already placed the plans under review. Why the hurry?
Coral reefs and associated fisheries are of vital social, cultural and economic importance.
Noah Pomeroy
In a changing climate, ocean populations sometimes rise and fall in unpredictable waves. Scientists, managers and fishers must make economically and ecologically sound decisions based on long-term outlooks.
Monitoring fishing vessels could be a growth industry in the tiny Pacific island nations that govern the world’s largest tuna fishery.
AAP Image/Xavier La Canna
A tiny handful of Pacific island nations control more than 50% of the world’s tuna fishery, and their efforts to monitor international fishing vessels are set to become a major source of jobs.
Looks healthy, but still lacks the big predatory fish… how would it rate on the index?
AF Johnson
We know that fishing has significant impacts on our oceans and the animals that live in them. Effects can range from habitat modification caused by bottom trawls, stock declines from overfishing or subtler…
Trawling for fish? You might be setting yourself up for a paltry haul next time.
Glenn Perrigo
Trawling – dragging heavy gear over ocean bottoms in search of fish near the sea floor – is arguably one of the most destructive human practices. Removing fish from the sea for an ever-hungry, growing…
Phytoplankton are responsible for half the world’s productivity. Here, a phytoplankton bloom in the northern Pacific.
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center/Flickr
You may not have heard of them or given them much thought, but phytoplankton — the microscopic plants that grow throughout the world’s oceans — are the foundation of oceanic food webs. Although tiny, they…
Young Steller sea lions in Prince William Sound, Alaska. NMFS Permit 14336.
Markus Horning
A decade ago, we set out to unravel deep ocean crime scenes we weren’t even sure existed. The crime? Endangered Steller sea lions were rapidly disappearing in parts of Alaska. Their numbers dropped by…