The world will run out of seafood by 2048 if steep declines in marine species continue at current rates, according to a study released today by an international group of ecologists and economists.
The paper, published in the journal Science, concludes that overfishing, pollution, and other environmental factors are wiping out important species across the globe, hampering the ocean's ability to produce seafood, filter nutrients and resist the spread of disease.
"We really see the end of the line now," said lead author Boris Worm, a marine biologist at Canada's Dalhousie University. "It's within our lifetime. Our children will see a world without seafood if we don't change things."...
The National Fisheries Institute, a trade group representing seafood producers as well as suppliers, restaurants and grocery chains, said in a statement that most wild marine stocks remain sustainable. It added that its members could meet the rising global demand for seafood in part by relying on farmed fish: "To meet the gap between what wild capture can provide sustainably and the growing demand for seafood, aquaculture is filling that need."But several scientists challenged that prediction and questioned why humanity should pay for a resource that the ocean had long provided for free. "It's like turning on the air conditioning rather than opening the window," said Stanford University marine sciences professor Stephen R. Palumbi, one of the paper's authors.
Thursday, November 02, 2006
No Seafood Soup For You
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2 comments:
I like this new angle! Who cares about ecology? All I care about is where am I gonna get my fish sticks and how much am I going to have to pay! But instead of seafood disappearing it seems more likely to me that just the definition of it will change; that is, change again. Americans found lobsters appetizing as cockroaches before they fished out the Chesapeake. We'll just be getting to know a few more arthropods a bit more intimately. I mean, if you're into reading the ingredients lists on the sides of packages.
Seafood will become red algae spawned by toxic waste and sewage flowing from the memory of real seafood. We will take a keen interest in the culinary possibilities of the zebra mussel, the bones of coral, and styrofoam soaked in saltwater. It's a matter of perception - while right now we see a fish and think "seafood," we'll soon see plastic bags washed up in Jersey and think "seafood."
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