A new study in the journal Science evaluates the status of unassessed global fisheries. While the results suggest that most fish stocks suffer dramatic declines, if people act now to put in place proven solutions, there is hope for the oceans and those that depend on them.

Co-author of the paper, Steve Gaines, dean of the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management at the University of California, Santa Barbara and Rare trustee, spoke to Rare about his new scientific findings.

What motivated you to do this research? 

Fish play a really important role in terms of food and livelihoods for people around the world and yet we know very little about the status of fisheries. In fact, our view of how fisheries are faring has really been dominated by a minute fraction. We know a lot of information about just a few hundred fisheries out of about 10,000 global fisheries. Those few hundred are the ones that are worth a lot of money and potentially could be giving us a really biased view about how the rest of the world’s fisheries are really doing.

How are the rest of the world’s fisheries doing?

Unfortunately, they are not doing as well as the ones we know a lot about. And that makes sense. It is hard to make good decisions about fisheries if you don’t know the status. If we have a target of where fisheries produce at their maximum rate, let’s say that is a value of one. We found that the average fishery on the planet was at about 60 percent of that target, substantially worse off than we want to be in terms of providing the greatest production of food and the greatest livelihoods for people that depend on the oceans.

Commercial fishing in Bahi’a de Kino, Mexico

The other important thing we found was small fisheries—very common throughout the tropics, where there is the highest biodiversity and where local people most depend upon their local fishery as a source for food—were in even worse shape. They were at a value of about half the target. That means that if we fix the problem, we would double the number of those fish in the ocean and in many cases you would double the catch.

“The real need here is something that is exactly what Rare provides.”

How did you come up with these estimates? 

The reason why it is hard to assess most fisheries is that you cannot see them. Unlike counting deer or a really interesting parrot that we can walk in the forest and count, it is really hard to count fish. And that is what we need to know. We need to know how many fish there are in the ocean to be able to estimate how many we can take out sustainably. The only real information we usually have is how many we are taking out. Our approach was to use the information of how many we take out to tell us something about how many fish there are. We used a variety of statistical tools to get a really good estimate of how many fish are still in the ocean on the basis of information that is available for a lot of fisheries—how many fish are being caught, how many have been caught in the last few years, what is the recent trend, how quickly the fishery developed, how fast the fish grows, how early they mature—and by combining those data, we estimated for the first time how many fish are in the water.

How accurate are these estimates?

Our findings suggest the estimates are very good if we are looking at the average pattern for the globe. They are not accurate if you just pick one fishery. And that is an important finding. To fix the problem we need to be able to work with individual fisheries, with local communities that are able to work with the fish that are in that area and that requires other techniques to be able to estimate how many fish they have. Those techniques are available. The timing is right. This is not a problem where we lack scientific tools to estimate how many fish there are. We can do it on the global level now using our approach and there are other techniques that local fishermen can use to get good estimates for a single fishery.

So even though the report shows fisheries are in bad shape, you think there is hope? 

I think the most exciting things is that the report tells us what the problem is, where the problem is what is the benefit of fixing it. And it sets in stage the possibility for a lot more action. The bulk of the problem is not in big fisheries. There are issues there that need to be worked on, but the bulk of the problem is little fisheries dispersed around the world where local communities do most of the fishing. That’s the real sweet spot in terms of fixing the problem. It is where the biggest biodiversity issue is. It is where you have the most direct connection between the local production of the fisheries and local consumption of food by people. It is the place where we can get the biggest wins.

This is not going to be something fixed at the level of high-level institutions. It is going to have a very strong community component. It also means that you cannot solve this problem by fixing a small number of fisheries. You have got to be able to scale this to literally hundreds. Fixing the problem in this case is a win in every way. We get more fish in the ocean, more fish being caught and better livelihoods for people that are catching them. When we fix this problem everybody wins: the fish win, the fishermen win and local communities win.

The opportunities you mention sound very aligned with Rare’s work. Do you agree?

It is exactly in line with what Rare’s skillset brings to the table in terms of inspiring conservation, in terms of being able to get local communities engaged in changing the way they interact with the sea. I think the combination of that and putting in more rights for local communities with protected areas is the only kind of tool we have that can scale to the level of the problem. That is where I think this is a perfect fit. The real need here is something that is exactly what Rare provides.

You answer a lot of questions in this study. Did it beget new questions that you hope to tackle? 

Any scientific study like this raises more questions than it answers. That is what I love about science. This paper gives us a good quantitative sense of what the nature of the problem is on a global scale. That raises all kinds of questions about how do we solve the problem in all of its components. It also puts on the table challenges for new innovations to enhance the pace of change on the solution side so that it can outpace the nature of these problems. It always raises more questions than it answers and that is what’s fun. 

Local fishers in the Philippines mark boundaries of their marine sanctuary.

To read the abstract for “Status and Solutions for the World’s Unassessed Fisheries” in Science magazine click here.