According to U.N.marine experts overexploitation of the world’s fish resources is caused partly by rising wealth in Asia and fishing subsidies. At the same time, pollution and climate change are destroying fish habitat. The experts say that up to 32 percent of the world’s fish stocks are overexploited, depleted or recovering.

Source: huffingtonpost.com

Australian researchers found that increasing human CO2 emissions that are absorbed in the world’s seas, thus changing the chemical environment of the water, affect the brains and central nervous systems of sea fish. Over time, this may have serious concequences for their survival.

Source: news.discovery.com

Overfishing is taking a heavy toll on marine predators such as sharks, tuna and swordfish, says a new study by scientists at the University of British Columbia. The study, published online Monday in the journal Marine Ecology Progress Series, says predator species in north Pacific and Atlantic waters have dropped by more than 90 per cent since the 1950s.

Source: huffingtonpost.ca

A tuna industry whistleblower captured new video footage that shows the routine slaughter of bycatch, among which whale sharks, rays and whales. The footage, that was released by Greenpeace, was shot onboard a tuna fishing vessel in the Pacific Ocean that uses fish aggregating devices, one of the most aggressive means of fishing used by the industry.

Source: guardian.co.uk

According to Colombian authorities, as many as 2,000 hammerhead, Galápagos and whale sharks may have been slaughtered for their fins in the Malpelo wildlife sanctuary. Reportedly, 10 Costa Rican trawlers illegally entered the sanctuary, after which a large amount of finless sharks were found at the bottom of the ocean floor.

Source: huffingtonpost.com

Changing human activities coupled with a dynamic environment over the past few centuries have caused fluctuating periods of decline and recovery of corals reefs in the Hawaiian Islands, according to a study sponsored in part by the Institute for Ocean Conservation Science at Stony Brook University.

Source: sciencedaily.com

Cod stocks in the Irish Sea and the west coast of Scotland have collapsed because of overfishing and politicians’ refusal to fix low enough catch quotas, according to Dr Paul Connolly,  a leading fisheries scientist who advises the European commission on fish quotas.

Source: guardian.co.uk

Oil mats submerged in the seabed more than a year after the biggest oil spill in U.S. history pose a long-term threat to coastal ecosystems across the northern Gulf of Mexico, according to Auburn University researchers.

Source: scientificamerican.com

The first “big picture” study of the effects of rapidly rising temperatures in the northeast Atlantic Ocean shows that a major shift in fish stocks is already well underway. The study, led by Dr Steve Simpson of the University of Bristol in collaboration with researchers from eight other institutions, analysed 28 years of fisheries agency data from 11 independent surveys covering more than a million square kilometres of the European continental shelf. The data show that fish in European waters have undergone profound community-level changes that are related to dramatic warming trends for the region. 72% of common fish species have already shown a change in abundance that relates to the rising sea temperatures.

Source: sciencedaily.com

As climate change heats up river water, salmon are likely to go extinct by the end of the century in parts of the West Coast of the USA. A new study found that warmer waters make the  future for the fish look grim, no matter which climate projections the researchers used.

Source: news.discovery.com