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Saving crabs for sustainable fishing
From global overfishing to catastrophic effects of climate change, the risks facing our oceans are real and urgent.
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Fish catching: Fishermen clean a net in Banda Aceh, Aceh province, after overnight fishing. (AFP/Chaideer Mahyuddin)
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rom global overfishing to catastrophic effects of climate change, the risks facing our oceans are real and urgent. No area of the world knows this better than the Asia-Pacific region. From fishing villages in Tinambac, Philippines to Tsukijii, Japan’s massive seafood market, ocean fisheries are a critical resource to the economy and people of the region.
That is why it is so important that world leaders met in Bali, Indonesia for the Our Ocean Conference (OOC). With the majority of the world’s fish being caught and consumed by nations from this region, our hope to build healthier ocean fisheries hinges on the ability of these countries to transform how they manage fishing over the coming decades.
Billions of people, many of them living in the Asia-Pacific region, depend on the ocean as a key source of protein. But more than a third of the world’s fisheries today are overfished — we take more fish from the sea than it can replace each year. And if that doesn’t change soon, 80 percent of global fisheries will be overfished in the coming decades.
But more and more, fishing communities around the world are showing us that it doesn’t have to be that way.
