The expansion of industrial fishing expansion impacts 90 percent of global oceans, causing a massive decline in catches, researchers at the Universities of Western Australia and British Columbia reported.
Industrial fishing fleets have doubled the distance they sail to fishing grounds since 1950 but catch only a third of what they did 65 years ago per kilometer, according to data gleaned using the universities' Sea Around Us initiative.
By mapping the growth and spread of industrial fisheries, researchers found that these global trends were dominated by the heavily subsidized fleets of a small number of countries that have increased the total area fished from 60 per cent to 90 per cent of the world’s oceans.
