Marine Vandals

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Pirate fishers are environmental vandals that ignore conservation measures and don't reduce bycatch through available technology. They also don't recognise the areas that are closed to fishing to protect juveniles, nurseries and habitats. Illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing accounts for 3,080 tonnes of illegal fishing in the 2005/06 fishing season. This puts pressure on legal fishing in the region as fishing quotas are adjusted to take account of the lowering fish stocks. Antarctic krill, which seabirds, penguins, fish and whales feed upon, has dropped by as much as 80% since the 1970s. Krill feed on the algae underneath sea ice and the fall in the amount of sea ice, a process which is linked to global warming, is largely thought to be the cause of this drop. However, overfishing also contributes to the decline in krill numbers.