'Fish, seafood on track to disappear by 2048¿
Afp, Washington
The world's fish and seafood could disappear by 2048 as overfishing and pollution destroy ocean ecosystems at an accelerating pace, US and Canadian researchers reported.If current global trends continue, the loss of fish and seafood will threaten humans' food supplies and the environment, according to the most exhaustive study to date on the subject, published in the November 3 issue of the US journal Science. "Our analyses suggest that business as usual would foreshadow serious threats to global food security, coastal water quality, and ecosystem stability, affecting current and future generations," the international team of ecologists and economists wrote in "Impact of Biodiversity Loss on Ocean Ecosystem Services". The four-year analysis was the first to study all existing data on ocean species and ecosystems and synthesize them to understand the importance of biodiversity at the global scale. "Whether we looked at tide pools or studies over the entire world's ocean, we saw the same picture emerging," lead author Boris Worm of Dalhousie University, in Canada, said in a statement. Worm said the disappearance of species from ocean ecosystems had been accelerating. "Now we begin to see some of the consequences. For example, if the long-term trend continues, all fish and seafood species are projected to collapse within my lifetime -- by 2048," Worm said.
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File photo dated June 1, 2005 shows men carrying tuna fishes at the at a fishing port in the southern Philippine city of General Santos. Overfishing and pollution of the oceans could force seafood completely off human's plates by the middle of the 21st century, scientists warned in a new study published yesterday. PHOTO: AFP |
