Overfishing can bring down reefs because fish are one of the key functional groups that hold reefs together.
OO Emptying the Seas: Overfishing Top Down, Acidifying Bottom Up - the marine food chain, that is.
Fishermen, on the other hand, could realize that, by overfishing, they are driving down prices and depleting fishing stocks.
"Overfishing, overfishing, they never shut it down," he said of the industry as a whole.
Arne Fuglvog, a former fisheries advisor to Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski and commercial fisherman, who stepped down when he was charged with overfishing in Alaska waters in 2011, has reportedly found a new vocation -- lobbyist for commercial fishing companies.
This is probably down to all the publicity surrounding discards and overfishing.
This was also the first time the United States shut down a fishery because of climate change rather than overfishing.
The current situation is so dire that we may now be down to only one viable option to immediately end overfishing and allow international governments to get their act together and settle on a plan to bring back the population: a complete moratorium on commercial harvest.
In the Caribbean, a combination of release from top-down control due to loss of the sea urchin Diadema antillarum to disease, coupled with overfishing, eutrophication, and destruction of the physical structure of the reef due to hurricanes, led to nearly complete loss of Caribbean corals [3], [11] [13].
Arguably, this isolation prevents overfishing.
