Hundred‐year decline of North Atlantic predatory fishes

By Villy Christensen, Sylvie Gue¨nette, Johanna Jacomina Heymans, Carl J Walters, R. Watson, D. Zeller, Daniel Pauly. 2003

525 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We estimate the biomass of high-trophic level fishes in the North Atlantic at a spatial scale of 0.5° latitude by 0.5° longitude based on 23 spatialized ecosystem models, each constructed to represent a given year or short period from 1880 to 1998. We extract over 7800 data points that describe the abundance of high-trophic level fishes as a function of year, primary production, depth, temperature, latitude, ice cover and catch composition. We then use a multiple linear regression to predict the spatial abundance for all North Atlantic spatial cells for 1900 and for each year from 1950 to 1999. The results indicate that the biomass of high-trophic level fishes has declined by two-thirds during the last 50-year period, and with a factor of nine over the century. Catches of high-trophic level fishes increased from 2.4 to 4.7 million tonnes annually in the late 1960s, and subsequently declined to below 2 million tonnes annually in the late 1990s. The fishing intensity for high-trophic level fishes tripled during the first half of the time period and remained high during the last half of the time period. Comparing the fishing intensity to similar measures from 35 assessments of high-trophic level fish populations from the North Atlantic, we conclude that the trends in the two data series are similar. Our results raise serious concern for the future of the North Atlantic as a diverse, healthy ecosystem; we may soon be left with only low-trophic level species in the sea.

Subfields: Ecology, Global and Planetary Change

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/0d3fb41c90302352bff92e3212db149c5e71e635

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Citations in the corpus

The destruction of the 'animal forests' in the oceans: Towards an over- simplification of the benthic ecosystems (2013, unknown): “in our oceans (Christensen et al., 2003).”
Habitat triage for exploited fishes: Can we identify essential “Essential Fish Habitat?” (2005, background): “The state of the world’s marine fisheries has been the subject of much recent attention (Botsford et al., 1997; Pauly et al., 2002; Christensen et al., 2003; Myers and Worm, 2003).”
Marine Fish Population Collapses: Consequences for Recovery and Extinction Risk (2004, background): “Similarly extensive declines over the past 50 years have been reported across a broad range of predatory marine fishes (Christensen et al. 2003, Myers and Worm 2003).”
Global trends in world fisheries: impacts on marine ecosystems and food security (2005, background): “Several major studies, by Jackson et al. (2001), Christensen et al. (2003), and Myers & Worm (2003), showed that marine fisheries impact their resources base and their supporting ecosystems far more strongly than commonly assumed, thus providing further support for our explanation of observed catch…”
Radical changes in the Wadden Sea fauna and flora over the last 2,000 years (2005, background): “As a general trend for the North Atlantic, Christensen et al. (2003) estimated that predatory fish biomass has declined by a factor of nine since 1900.”
Fishing down the deep (2006, background): “With the decline of shallow coastal waters resources, increasing demand, and new technology, fisheries are evidently expanding offshore (e.g. Christensen et al. 2003; Myers and Worm 2003; Pauly et al. 2003) and into deeper waters (Koslow et al. 2000; Garibaldi and Limongelli 2003; FAO 2004; Gianni…”
Changes in diet and trophic position of a top predator 10 years after a mass mortality of a key prey (2010, background): “However, no long-term studies have been conducted to determine the ecological impact of the mortality event in the marine foodweb of southern Australia, and more research is needed to understand the system better, such as in studies of predator–prey interactions in the Baltic Sea, southern Benguela,”
Thermal niche of Atlantic cod Gadus morhua: limits, tolerance and optima (2010, background): “…(Worm et al. 2006, ICES 2007, Pitcher et al. 2009) and, in some cases, collapsing (Hutchings & Myers 1994, Cook et al. 1997, O’Brien et al. 2000, Christensen et al. 2003, Hutchings 2004, Rose 2004), with continued debate as to whether this is the consequence of high fishing mortality, climate…”
Good news, bad news: global fisheries discards are declining, but so are total catches (2005, background): “And that is bad news, especially if it is indicative of declining total availability of fish, such as those suggested for the North Atlantic based on biomass estimation (Christensen et al. 2003).”
Using fishers' anecdotes, naturalists' observations and grey literature to reassess marine species at risk: the case of the Gulf grouper in the Gulf of California, Mexico (2005, methodology): “…and from calls made by other workers on the importance of addressing long-term historical impacts (Pauly 1995; Jackson et al. 2001; Pitcher 2001; Christensen et al. 2003; Myers and Worm 2003; Roberts 2003; Roman and Palumbi 2003; Baum and Myers 2004; Jennings and Blanchar 2004), we recommend…”