Environment & Energy
Related: About this forumCanadian Archaeologists Find Superabundance Of Pacific Herring Before Industrial Fishing Began
Scientists analyzed almost half a million fish bones to shed light on the population history of Pacific herring (Clupea pallasii) in the North Pacific Ocean. Their paper, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) reveals a decline of unprecedented scale. It suggests that while the abundance of Pacific herring does fluctuate naturally, their numbers have fallen precipitously since commercial fishing started targeting the species in the 19th century.
The team, made up of anthropologists and archaeologists hailing from universities across Canada, set out with an ambition to frame depleted 21st century fisheries within a wider historical context.
We used all available archaeological data compiled from 171 sites spread throughout the coast and collected by researchers over a period of 40 years, co-author Iain McKechnie, a coastal archaeologist from Simon Fraser University and self-described counter of fishbones, told mongabay.com. Each site has the same type of systematically collected data (fish bones morphologically identified to species, genera, or family) and this totals 435,777 bones.
The data revealed that historic Pacific herring populations were far more consistently abundant and extensive than they are today. The Pacific herring is a small fish with large implications for the areas they inhabit. The herring act as food for a diverse range of other animals, including whales, dolphins, seagulls, bears, wolves and other species of fish. According to McKechnie, this makes them a vital protagonist in the effort to preserve marine ecosystems in the northern Pacific Ocean. Pacific herring is a forage fish and forage fish are globally significant ecologically and economically in that they are a central node in marine ecosystemthey transform energy from lower trophic levels (e.g., zooplankton) into the higher levels of animals that prey on herring, (including) seabirds, larger fish, and marine mammals, McKechnie said. Therefore, without sufficient forage fish population to prey on, a large number of key birds, fish, and marine species can be dramatically affected.
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http://news.mongabay.com/2014/0609-barrett-herring.html
dipsydoodle
(42,239 posts)that proposals are currently being made to ban fishing worldwide outside of 200 mile coastal strips.
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)hatrack
(59,686 posts)Under what sanctions?
dipsydoodle
(42,239 posts).
hatrack
(59,686 posts)Fishing is a vast global enterprise fueling everything from "sustainable" aquaculture to fish meal for garden fertilizer to Omega 3 diet supplements to pollack and snow crab to support the faux crab industry, to say nothing of enormous industrial fisheries for squid and increasingly krill, God help us.
Oh, and fish for people to eat. Shouldn't forget that.
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)It's not going to be "shut down", any more than coal mining is.
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)So it goes...
unhappycamper
(60,364 posts)they named it Cape Cod.
Unfortunately, it also has a declining fish population.
hatrack
(59,686 posts)nt
MisterP
(23,730 posts)I'd also recommend H. Bruce Franklin's book "Menhaden"--and Franklin's writing in general