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At current rates of decline, all marine fish stocks are projected to collapse by 2048, leaving the oceans practically lifeless.
The total number of fishing vessels in the world in 2016 was estimated to exceed 4.5 million and the total annual number of fish caught is estimated between 1 and 3 trillion per year. Industrial fishing at this scale is unsustainable, with super-trawler nets that are big enough to hold 13 jumbo jets! Watch Sea Shepard’s short film showing the true face of industrial fishing.
World’s second-largest fishing boat
14 times the size of average British trawler
Every day around 8 million pieces of plastic make their way into our oceans. There are now 5.25 trillion macro and micro pieces of plastic & 46,000 pieces in every square mile of ocean. Watch a short animated film pulling back the curtain on the plastic pollution headlines.
All drains lead to the ocean and the pollution from run-off and dumping of waste has serious economic and health impacts. The toxins from pesticides, fertilizers and other chemicals used on farms contaminate nearby rivers that flow into the ocean causing toxic algae blooms and red tides, killing marine life and damaging habitats and ecosystems. Watch a short TedEX film on what creates the lethal conditions that lead to dead zones
The oceans are absorbing more heat as greenhouse gases trap more energy from the sun resulting in the ocean surface temperatures and sea levels rising. Increased levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide are causing the oceans to become more acidic. These changes are having disastrous effects on coral ecosystems and marine biodiversity in the oceans around the world. Watch a short video on how ocean acidification increasingly affects ecosystems and those communities that directly rely on the ocean.
Governments around the world use fisheries subsidies to promote fishing, typically by supplementing fishers’ incomes or lowering their costs. But subsidies can harm fish stocks when such payments allow fishers to travel further and stay at sea longer.
