'Only 50 years left' for sea fish

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By Richard Black Environment correspondent, BBC News website There will be virtually nothing left to fish from the seas by the middle of the century if current trends continue, according to a major cientific study. Stocks have collapsed in nearly one-third of the sea fisheries, and the rate decline is accelerating. Writing in the journal Science, the international team of researches says fishery decline is closely tied to a broader loss of marine biodiversity. But a greater use of protected areas could safeguard existing stocks."The way we use the oceans is that we hope and assume there will always be another species to exploit after we've completely gone through the last one," said research leader Boris Worm, from Dalhousie University in Canada."What we're highlighting is there is a finite number of stocks; we have gone through one-third, and we are going to get through the rest," he told the BBC News website. Steve Palumbi, from Stanford University in California, one of the other scientists on the project, added: "Unless we fundamentally change the way we manage all the ocean species together, as working ecosystems, then this century is the last century of wild seafood." Full article at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6108414.stm