Guardian More than half the world’s oceans are being fished by industrial vessels, new research reveals. The maps based on feedback from more than 70,000 vessels show commercial fishing covers a greater surface area than agriculture, and will raise fresh questions about the health of oceans and sustainability of trawler fishing. The data, published in the journal Science (see below), also shows how fishing declines sharply at weekends, and celebrations like Christmas and Chinese New Year.

The data also helps to explain the extreme decline in some fish stocks: the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) says one-third of commercial fish stocks are being caught at unsustainable levels. But the clear impact of cultural and political events on fishing also offers hope that humans can restrain overfishing, said the report’s author, David Kroodsma.   “What that means is we have control as humans to decide how we’re fishing the oceans: we’re not destined to overfish, we can control it,” said Kroodsma.

Kroodsma and colleagues gathered 22bn pieces of information from satellite systems installed in the biggest fishing vessels, and some smaller ones, usually operating closer to shore. From this work from 2014 to 2016 they produced maps of where fishing activity was happening, and where it was the most intense. The blue to yellow colouring showing fishing activity covers most of the world’s oceans.

Abstract

Although fishing is one of the most widespread activities by which humans harvest natural resources, its global footprint is poorly understood and has never been directly quantified. We processed 22 billion automatic identification system messages and tracked >70,000 industrial fishing vessels from 2012 to 2016, creating a global dynamic footprint of fishing effort with spatial and temporal resolution two to three orders of magnitude higher than for previous data sets. Our data show that industrial fishing occurs in >55% of ocean area and has a spatial extent more than four times that of agriculture. We find that global patterns of fishing have surprisingly low sensitivity to short-term economic and environmental variation and a strong response to cultural and political events such as holidays and closures.

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