Restoring the world’s fisheries is a no-brainer, according to a new study published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
A team of scientists from the University of California - Santa Barbara, the Environmental Defense Fund, and the University of Washington compiled a database of over 4,500 fisheries around the world, and after using various bioeconomic models, the authors found that health and productivity are not mutually exclusive when it comes to the world’s fisheries.
“It is not a tradeoff between the needs of fishermen and the needs of fish,” Douglas Rader, chief oceans scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund and one of the lead authors of the study, tells The Christian Science Monitor in a phone interview Monday. “To have our fish and eat them too – it’s remarkable.”
