Living Resources: Fish and Fishery

The fishing industry, in both the developed and the developing world, is one of the largest industries exploiting sea resources and supplies as much protein for food as all other meat products. The industry is so large and so much has been written about it in the specialist literature. Local fishing industries have risen and fallen according to the level of fishing stocks in the fishing grounds. But it is since the conclusion of the UN Conference on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) in the 1980s that the most significant changes have taken place in the fishing sector with the introduction of new technologies and the establishment of exclusive economic and fisheries zone. The overall effect of all this is that more fish can be caught with less effort and fish stocks in many cases have been depleted close to extinction. Regional controls have had to be developed such as the Tuna Fisheries Policy of the Indian Ocean. Successful fisheries management depends not only on understanding and modeling the ecology of fish stocks and the factors that influence them, but also on having sufficient monitoring and prediction of conditions to allow the models to be implemented realistically.