Fishers today have to work 17 times harder to land the same number of fish caught in 1889, a study claims. (Photo: Stock File)

Study: 94 pct of UK fisheries gone

UK fisheries have seen an "extraordinary" decline that has been covered up by developments in the UK's trawling fleet over the past 120 years. British fish stocks have diminished by 94 per cent, a study suggested on Tuesday.

Records of UK fish landings stretching back to the 1880s show that drops in cod, haddock, plaice and other species have been steeper and more long-term than previously realised, researchers said.

Fishing vessels today have to work 17 times harder than those in 1889 to land the same number of fish when they were sail-powered and fished close to port, according to figures collected by the UK government since 1889.

The data has been analysed for the first time and suggests that technological developments in fleet and navigation to new fishing grounds allowed them to fish further, deeper and faster, and this has concealed fish decline, reports The Guardian.

The UK trawl fishing fleet landed twice as much fish in 1889 than today, said researchers from the University of York and the Marine Conservation Society (MCS).

Publishing their findings in the journal Nature Communications, the researchers warned that fisheries had been dwindling more drastically and over a broader period than suggested by scientific studies of European fish stocks, which only go back 20-40 years.

"It is clear that seabed ecosystems have undergone a profound reorganisation since the industrialization of fishing and that commercial stocks of most bottom-living species, which once comprised an important component of marine ecosystems, collapsed long ago," Callum Roberts and Ruth Thurstan wrote in the study, Reuters reports.

Findings show that fishing quota systems have not helped alleviate the decline and underscore the urgent need for action to stop the overfishing of European fisheries and rebuild stocks, the scientists said.

The researchers called for a much stronger reform of the EU Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) to allow for the recovery of UK fisheries.

"Over a century of intensive trawl fishing has severely depleted UK seas of bottom-living fish like halibut, turbot, haddock and plaice," said Dr Simon Brockington, head of conservation at the MCS. "The reform of the common fisheries policy needs to set recovery targets which are much more ambitious than they currently are."

Halibut and haddock both have declined by more than 99 per cent, while hake and ling fell by over 95 per cent and cod by 87 per cent, the researchers told.

"This research makes clear that the state of UK bottom fisheries – and by implication European fisheries since the fishing grounds are shared – is far worse than even the most pessimistic of assessments currently in circulation,” affirmed Professor Callum Roberts, from the University of York's environment department.

Related article:

- Current policy needs overhaul: study

By Natalia Real
[email protected]
www.seafood.media

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