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17

heavily harvested fish populations, except, perhaps herring and

similar fish that mature early in life. An investigation of over

90 different heavily harvested stocks have shown little, if any,

recovery 15 years after 45–99% reduction in biomass (Hutch-

ings, 2000). This is particularly true as most catch reductions

are introduced far too late (Shertzer

et al

., 2007). Indeed, ma-

1950

0

100

Stocks (%)

underdeveloped

developing

fully exploited

over exploited

crashed

80

60

40

20

1960

1970

1980

1990

2000

Figure 3. The state of the World’s fishery stocks.

rine extinctions may be significantly underrated (Casey and

Meyers, 1998; Edgar

et al

., 2005). More importantly in this

context is not the direct global extinction of species, but the

regional or local extinctions as abundance declines. Local and

regional extinctions are far more common than global extinc-

tions, particularly in a dynamic environment like the oceans.

0

0

100

Per cent of global catch

Depth

1950

2000

2004

80

60

40

20

2000

4000

6000

8000

10000

Figure 2. Estimated per cent of the global catch taken at depths

for the years 1950, 2000 and 2004,

which illustrates how fishers

are moving further offshore (and often deeper) to catch fish.