Yellow fish swarm Australia's Ningaloo reef. Around 80 percent of the world's fisheries are fully exploited, over exploited or significantly depleted. Credit: Angelo DeSantis/cc by 2.0
Fisheries at the Tipping Point
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), cited by Greenpeace International, around 80 percent of the world's fisheries are fully exploited, over exploited or significantly depleted.
Some species have already been fished to commercial extinction; many more are on the verge.
And according to the World Bank, the lost economic benefits due to overfishing are estimated to be in the order of 50 billion dollars annually.
The value of illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing (IUU) on the other hand is currently estimated to amount to 10-23.5 billion dollars per year.
The deep ocean seafloor has also become the new frontier for major corporations with mining technology, promising lucrative returns, but not counting the impacts of such a destructive activity on other sectors, ecosystem services and coastal communities.
Meanwhile, Greenpeace says, the impacts of climate change are causing dead zones in the ocean, increasing temperatures and causing acidification.
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