Fish Vanishing from Southeast Asian Oceans - Report --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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AUSTRALIA: November 8, 2007
SYDNEY - Southeast Asia's oceans are fast running out of fish, putting the livelihoods of up to 100 million people at risk and increasing the need for governments to support the maintenance of fish stocks, an Australian expert said.
Fisheries in the region had expanded dramatically in recent decades and Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines were now in the top 12 fish producing countries in the world, Meryl Williams said in a paper for Australia's Lowy Institute. "As the fourth largest country in world fish production, Indonesia is a fisheries giant. Yet ... Indonesian marine fisheries resources are close to fully exploited and a significant number in all areas are over-exploited," she said.
Williams, a former director general of the international WorldFish Center, said the number of fishers was still increasing in most Southeast Asian countries despite a trend since the 1980s to close frontiers due to territorial claims and overfishing.
In the Gulf of Thailand, the density of fish had declined by 86 percent from 1961 to 1991, while between 1966 and 1994 the catch per hour in the Gulf by trawlers fell more than sevenfold.
In Vietnam, a new fishing power and a rising source of imports by Australia, the total catch between 1981 and 1999 only doubled despite a tripling of capacity of the fishing fleet -- a sure sign that fishing was reaching capacity, she said.
In the Gulf of Tonkin, where Vietnam shares resources with China, the record was even worse with fish catch per hour in 1997 only a quarter of that in 1985.
"In the Philippines, most marine fisheries were overexploited by the 1980s, with catch rates as low as 10 percent of rates when these areas were lightly fished," she said.
Williams said Southeast Asian fisheries were serviced by a plethora of regional bodies and agreements, but few acted effectively on illegal fishing and shared stock management.
At the same time, illegal fishing was "dynamic, creative, clever and usually one step ahead of authorities".
A Southeast Asian government may issue a single fishing licence only to find it being used by four different boats, she said. In Indonesia, foreign fishing vessels, often Chinese in joint-ventures, operated on the "margins of legality" in a geographically vast archipelago.
Williams said Australia should step up collaboration with Southeast Asian countries to help manage fish stocks. (Reporting by Michael Byrnes; Editing by Richard Pullin)
Deep state: When the dinner bell rings for seafloor scavengers, big bottom-feeders [DT] get first dibs
2008 - "Empty Seas: Europe Takes Africa’s Fish, and Boatloads of Migrants Follow "
•Mar 19, 2010
NESCentMedia
Durham, NC Surplus food can be a double-edged sword for bottom-feeders in the ocean deep, says a new study in the April issue of Ecology. While extra nutrients give a boost to large animals on the deep sea floor, the feeding frenzy that results wreaks havoc on smaller animals in the seafloor sediment, researchers say.
Descend thousands of feet under the ocean to the deep sea floor, and youll find a blue-black world of cold and darkness, blanketed in muddy ooze. In this world without sunlight, food is often in short supply. Animals in the deep sea survive on dead and decaying matter drifting down from above, said marine biologist Craig McClain of the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center. Only about 3-5% of the remains of microscopic plants and animals that feed life at shallower depths actually makes it to the deep sea floor, McClain explained. If the oceans primary production were a 5-pound bag of sugar, that would be the equivalent of a sugar packet, said McClain.
Collaborating with James Barry of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI), McClain traveled to the deep waters off the coast of California to an area of the ocean floor that receives an additional source of food. In a steep, winding, underwater gorge known as Monterey Canyon —similar in size to the Grand Canyon —bottom-feeders get a boost from nutrient-rich sediments that slough off the canyon walls and collect on the canyon floor.
Theres typically more food available in the canyon than you would see outside the canyon, Barry explained. The stuff that rains down from above and accumulates at the base of the cliffs isnt just mud its food, McClain added. There are tiny food particles and bacteria in the sediment.
The researchers wanted to understand how the surplus food affected deep sea life on the canyon floor. Buried in the sediment and hidden from view, a diverse world of tiny marine animals snails, worms, crustatceans, clams, and other creatures no bigger than a pencil eraser live and feed in the canyon mud.
To find out how these animals are affected by the boost of food, the researchers sent a Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) equipped with video and sampling equipment to the base of the canyon. Piloted from a control room onboard a ship at the ocean surface, the ROV dove more than a mile to the canyon floor. As the ROV crept across the seafloor sediment, it video recorded everything in its path and pushed plastic tubes into the mud, pulling up cores of and animals and silt.
When they brought the samples back to the surface, they found nearly 200 species in the sediment. But as they sampled closer to the canyon walls, they were surprised to find that despite the extra food and nutrients, the sediment-dwellers became smaller and less diverse. Why might this be?
A closer look at the video footage suggests the answer lies not in the sediment, but just above. As the ROV approached the canyon walls, the researchers noticed swarms of bigger, mobile animals crabs, starfish, urchins, sea cucumbers and other seafloor scavengers crawling on the sediment surface. Normally few and far between, these animals sense that food has arrived and converge at the base of the cliffs, the researchers explained. The cliff face becomes a smorgasbord for animals, said McClain.
Ironically, more food for big, mobile animals on the sediment surface is bad news for smaller sediment-dwellers buried below. The larger animals devour all the food in their path as they plow across the canyon floor, wrecking habitat and leaving little for other animals to feed on. Larger organisms come in and they churn up the sediment and eat all the food. That has big consequences for smaller animals that live there, McClain explained.
The number of species near the cliff face was reduced by half compared to the middle of the canyon, said McClain. More food isnt always better, he added.
The teams findings were published online in the April 2010 issue of Ecology.
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CITATION: McClain, C. and J. P. Barry (2010). "Habitat heterogeneity, biogenic disturbance, and resource availability work in concert to regulate biodiversity in deep submarine canyons." Ecology. doi: xxx
The National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (NESCent) is an NSF-funded collaborative research center operated by Duke University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and North Carolina State University.
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