Scientists Warned Of Loss Of Western Canada Sardine Fishery Last Year - No One Listened

[hatrack]

Western Canada's sardine fleet returned with no fish this month. The loss of the fishery, normally worth CAN$32 million (US$30.7 million), took many by surprise. Yet researchers warned last year that it could happen.

There are still sardines off the US Pacific coast. But the vanishing of the Canadian fish is part of a process that could mean they all disappear for decades, says Juan Zwolinski of the University of California at Santa Cruz. Pacific sardine populations fluctuate with water temperature. Colder water means fewer fish. Temperatures last fell in the 1940s, but heavy fishing continued, devastating the stock and ending fishing until sardines returned when waters warmed in the 1980s.

"We think this is set to happen again," says Zwolinski, who tracked the population over the past century. He found that sardines have reproduced less since waters cooled in the 1990s. Almost all eggs now come from fish born a decade ago, which are nearly gone.

EDIT

Despite all this, Canada has continued to up their quotas. These natural boom and bust cycles make all sardine fisheries fundamentally unsustainable, says Alec MacCall of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in La Jolla, California. "There can be periods of decades when no fishing should be allowed since reproduction cannot even replace the parental stock."

EDIT

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn24493-sardine-disappearance-was-foreseen-but-ignored.html#.UnJNqlO_W8B

[sharp_stick]

1. And now the

fishermen and companies that wildly overfished the area will be begging for subsidies and lamenting how unfair it all is.

[OnlinePoker]

2. And blaming the Department of Fisheries and Oceans for not regulating the fishery

Of course, if they had done that, the fishers (we can't call them fishermen in Canada because that's sexist) would be screaming that the government was killing their livelihood.

[hatrack]

3. Freedumb!

Or something like that . . .

[Nihil]

4. Got it in one!

It's almost as if we've seen this story before ... (time & time again) ...