W. Swift Action, Some Hope For Planet's Fisheries - But Most Survey Data Developed World-Specific

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The future of the world's fisheries is grim but recovery is possible if governments act swiftly to manage commercial fishing, a major scientific study found recently.

"Across all regions, we are still seeing a troubling trend of increasing stock collapse," said Boris Worm of Canada's Dalhousie University, lead author of the study published in the journal Science in July. "But this paper shows that our oceans are not a lost cause." Worm, a co-author of a pessimistic report in 2006 predicting that overfishing could lead to a total collapse of global seafood stocks by 2048, said the latest study had given him new hope.

Several regions in the United States, Iceland and New Zealand had made significant progress in rebuilding stocks devastated by decades of overfishing through careful management strategies.

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Worm cautioned that the analysis -- the most comprehensive to date -- was mostly confined to managed fisheries in developed countries where long-term data on fish abundance is collected. The threat of collapse could thus be even higher in the remaining 75 percent of the world's fisheries.

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