New study of impact of overfishing on the Med

A National Geographic - sponsored study of the Mediterranean Sea, led by lead research Enric Sala, has described that there are many places in the sea with lots of fish, still (amazingly), but there are other places where they are virtually all gone.

Overfishing Leaves Much of Mediterranean a Dead Sea, Study Finds

 “We found a huge gradient, an enormous contrast. In reserves off Spain and Italy, we found the largest fish biomass in the Mediterranean,” said National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Enric Sala, the paper’s lead author. “Unfortunately, around Turkey and Greece, the waters were bare.”

 A series of marine reserves that shelter slivers of the sea allows certain ecosystems to recover and their all-important predators to eventually reappear. “The protection of the marine ecosystems is a necessity as well as a ‘business’ in which everyone wins,” Sala said. “The reserves act as savings accounts, with capital that is not yet spent and an interest yield we can live off. In Spain’s Medes Islands Marine Reserve, for example, a reserve of barely one square kilometer can generate jobs and a tourism revenue of 10 million euros, a sum 20 times larger than earnings from fishing.”

So the answer to helping ecosystems recover from overfishing is -- NO FISHING.