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Sustainable fishing: Reducing fishing pressure

What's the problem?

52% of the world's fisheries are fully exploited, and 24% are overexploited, depleted, or recovering from depletion. Clearly, fish populations need management regimes that allow depleted stocks to recover and stop any further over-exploitation.

Find out more...

More information

Various measures are needed to reduce fishing pressure to allow over-exploited fish populations to recover and to ensure the maintenance of healthy populations.

These include:

  • science-based quotas
  • comprehensive monitoring
  • credible control schemes
  • effective recovery plans
  • protection of spawning aggregations, juvenile fish, and important fish habitats through permanent or seasonal measures such as fishing gear restrictions, fisheries closures, and no-take zones (i.e., fisheries Marine Protected Areas (MPAs))

To date, WWF has:

  • advocated successfully for seasonal fisheries closures for Norwegian lobster, southern hake, anchovy, and sandeel in European waters.
  • supported the development and implementation of fish recovery plans, particularly for key commercial fisheries - such as tuna, cod, overfished species in European waters, deep-sea fisheries, and fisheries in the Southern Ocean - as well as in smaller-scale fisheries around the world. This includes an ongoing push for effective recovery plans for Atlantic cod and Atlantic bluefin tuna stocks in danger of commercial extinction.
  • helped create MPAs, no-take zones, and seasonal closures around important spawning and nursery sites to help depleted local fisheries recover and reduce the impact of fisheries on marine life, including in Australia, Belize, the Cook Islands, Fiji, Indonesia, Mozambique, Senegal, Turkey, and the US. Several of these MPAs and fisheries are managed by local communities, often using traditional practices.

Better fisheries management in the Southern Ocean

Patagonian toothfish is one commercial species living in the Southern Ocean.

WWF has been working with licensed and legal fishing operators, international and government management agencies, and other conservation groups to improve fisheries management in the Southern Ocean - the vast, remote, and often treacherous waters surrounding Antarctica.

Management of living resources in the Southern Ocean falls under the remit of the Commission on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CAMMLR). CAMMLR applies the precautionary approach and ecosystem-based management to all fishing in the region. The challenge has been to put these principles into practice.

Thanks to the cooperation between industry, governments, and conservation groups, several major steps forward have been made. These include:

  • The implementation of Management Plans for Macquarie Island Marine Park and Heard and McDonald Islands Marine Reserve that include scientific monitoring and the application of all relevant CCAMLR Conservation Measures for fishing (vessel monitoring system, catch reporting, and onboard observers).

  • The development and application of a Catch Documentation Scheme for toothfish by all CCAMLR parties, allowing the market to buy toothfish from legal sources.
  • The development and implementation of Australia's Threat Abatement Plan for the mortality of seabirds on longline fishing operations; the subsequent development and entry into force of the International Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels; and the development of Australia's National Plan of Action on Seabirds.

  • The successful trialing by licensed fishing operators of integrated line weighting, a measure to mitigate seabird mortality on longlines.

  • Various actions to reduce illegal, unregulated, and unreported (IUU) fishing.

  • The development of a Vision Statement for in zone and High Seas fisheries management for the Southern Ocean.

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