The end of the oceans

In June this year, scientists from the University of Tasmania and the University of Technology Sydney published research showing that over the past decade the biomass of large fish in Australian waters has declined by more than a third. The results may have jarred with government claims of Australian fisheries being among the most sustainable in the world, but they closely matched official figures showing a 32 per cent decline in Australian fishery catches in the same period. The declines were sharpest in species targeted for fishing and areas in which fishing is permitted, but even populations of species not exploited by fishing declined across the same period.

Vanitas of the Anthropocene. Plastic waste and the remains of
 coastal wildlife, Swansea Bay, Wales. Series by Jasmine Färling

The notion that a third of large fish in Australian waters disappeared in just 10 years should be of profound concern to all. The health of marine food webs depends upon healthy populations of the predator species that regulate populations of smaller species; declines in their numbers are likely to lead to hastening disruption of ocean ecosystems.

Read the essay by James Bradley from The Monthly  - “The end of the oceans.”