Wednesday June 11, 2025
DownToEarth —
Deep-sea species are highly vulnerable and under significant pressure, with only 29 per cent of their stocks being sustainably fished. This alarming statistic comes from a new report by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) titled Review of the state of world marine fishery resources — 2025, released at the United Nations Ocean Conference 3 (UNOC3) in Nice, France.
The report highlighted the unique challenges deep-sea species pose for sustainable exploitation, including late maturation, slow growth, long life expectancies, low natural mortality rates, and infrequent spawning. FAO defines a stock as ‘overfished’ if its biomass is below 80 per cent of the biomass that allows for maximum sustainable yield (MSY) — the level of fish catch that can be harvested indefinitely without depleting the stock, according to the Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute in Kochi.
Highly migratory sharks are also at risk, with over half of their stocks considered unsustainable. These sharks are often caught as bycatch in tuna fisheries. Of the 23 shark stocks covering seven species examined, 43.5 per cent were unsustainably fished. The highest annual shark catches are concentrated in the tropics: the western central Pacific, eastern Indian Ocean, and western Indian Ocean.