Frightening facts: The consequences of overfishing and pirate fishing

Around the World

• Nine of the world's 17 major fishing grounds are in serious decline (United Nations’ Food and Agricultural Organisation 1995)

• Seventy per cent of the world's marine fish stocks are fully-exploited, over-exploited, depleted or slowly recovering (FAO, 1995).

• Of the 3.5 million fishing vessels worldwide, about 1.7% are classified as large-scale, industrialised vessels, yet they take almost 60% of the global catch.

• Every year the world's fishing fleet receives between US$14 billion and US$20.5 billion in government subsidies (Milazzo, 1998). Most of the subsidies were taken by the large-scale, industrialised sector of the fishing industry.

• Industrialised fishing fleets kill and discard about 27 million tonnes of fish on average each year. That's one- quarter of the annual marine fish catch thrown overboard dead.

In the Southern Ocean

• In most areas of the Southern Ocean, pirate fishing accounts for 30-100% of the estimated total catch.

• The main importers of Patagonian Toothfish are Japan and the USA, where they fetch up to US$1000 each.

• Just one year of illegal fishing around Crozet Island in the Southern Ocean reduced the number of Patagonian Toothfish by 25%. Catch rates around Crozet Island were estimated to be more than 12 times the legal limit (CCAMLR, 1997). By 1998 the fishery had reached the point of commercial extinction.

• The Patagonian Toothfish fishery around Prince Edward and Marion Islands was fished to commercial extinction in just two years.

• As a result of illegal fishing, scientists believe the Patagonian Toothfish will be commercially extinct in less than two years.

• Patagonian Toothfish is not the first Southern Ocean fishery to be decimated by over-fishing. The species of fish called Marbled Rockcod plummeted to 2.5% of its original population as a direct result of overfishing during the mid-1970s. Today the population has yet to recover, remaining at just 3% of its original size.

• Scientists estimate that illegal fishers kill at least 60,000 albatrosses and petrels on longlines in the Southern Ocean each year.

• In just one year, the pirate fishery drowned between 9 and 15% of the breeding population of grey-headed albatrosses and 10 to 20% of the breeding population of giant petrels.

• Of the 24 albatross species, 20 live in the Southern Ocean and all 20 are under threat. Two species are critically endangered. Closest to extinction is the Amsterdam albatross, which has been reduced to between 10 and 16 pairs.

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