A new study in the journal Science evaluates the status of
unassessed global fisheries. While the results suggest that most
fish stocks suffer dramatic declines, if people act now to put
in place proven solutions, there is hope for the oceans and
those that depend on them. Co-author of the paper, Steve Gaines,
dean of the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management
at the University of California, Santa Barbara and Rare trustee,
spoke to Rare about his new scientific findings. What motivated
you to do this research? Fish play a really important role in
terms of food and livelihoods for people around the world and
yet we know very little about the status of fisheries. In fact,
our view of how fisheries are faring has really been dominated
by a minute fraction. We know a lot of information about just a
few hundred fisheries out of about 10,000 global fisheries.
Those few hundred are the ones that are worth a lot of money and
potentially could be giving us a really biased view about how
the rest of the w