What would happen if we stopped fishing? Share using Email Share on Twitter Share on FacebookShare on Linkedin (Image credit: Getty Images) please log in to view this image 23rd July 2023 Less than a century ago, the world's oceans were swarming with giant fish. Could we ever get them back? A As Stephen Palumbi looked around the deep blue water, he had the eerie impression that something wasn't right. It was the summer of 2016 and Palumbi – a professor of marine sciences at Stanford University – was on an expedition, scuba diving to assess the state of an obscure patch of reef in the Central Pacific. What he and his fellow researchers found was a forgotten world of astonishing abundance – grazing herds of plump parrotfish, eight-metre- high (26ft) forests of branching corals, humphead wrasse the size of baby rhinos… and sharks. So many sharks. "You couldn't look in any direction without seeing one or two," he says. But there was also an atmosphere of the abnormal – a scattering of uncanny clues that this place was different. "Every time you turned around, there was something strange going on," says Palumbi. Like a mysterious crack in the reef. Small, irregular fissures are not uncommon, except this one was in a perfectly straight line – an orderly chasm at least a mile long. And then there was the navigation incident. Earlier, his team had been aboard the dive boat, about to drop anchor in a lagoon several kilometres from the nearest land, when the navigation system started "screaming" – according to its calculations, they had run aground. They hadn't. Palumbi was diving in one of the most radioactive places on Earth: the Bikini Atoll, in the Marshall Archipelago. Nearly seven decades earlier, this ring-shaped band of islands – formerly an archetypal tropical paradise – had been used to test the atomic bomb. Over 12 years in the 1940s and 50s, the US blasted its tranquil waters and those of a neighbouring atoll with 67 nuclear weapons equivalent to 210 megatonnes of TNT – more than 7,000 times the force used at Hiroshima. Palumbi's navigation system was off because certain islands, still recorded on older maps, had been entirely vaporised by the explosions. This dark past has left a devastating legacy for the Bikini islanders, who have been unable to return to their home ever since. But it has also created an accidental sanctuary: a place where wildlife is protected by the area's very toxicity. For almost 70 years, there has been no fishing. please log in to view this image Today life in Bikini lagoon is thriving, possibly as a result of decades without fishing (Credit: Alamy) On land, most of humanity hasn't relied on hunting and gathering for millennia. For the average American, shooting an armadillo for dinner would be considered somewhat unorthodox. But this is not the case for the oceans. As our population has increased, so has the amount of wild seafood we eat, and today, it makes up a significant portion of the diets of three billion people worldwide. However, this free buffet has had radical consequences. In less than a century, once-thriving ecosystems have become deserts, one of the world's favourite fish is nearing extinction and at the collapsed fishery in Newfoundland, up to 810,000 tonnes of cod that were historically caught each year have gone missing. In fact, humans have utterly transformed the planet's oceans, decreasing the total biomass of fish by an estimated 100 million tonnes since prehistoric times. It's thought that 90% of the planet's fish stocks have already been used up. There is a growing movement to change this. This year, the United Nations (UN) signed a historic agreement: the "high seas" treaty, which aims to protect marine life in areas of the open ocean that are not controlled by any country. This vast swathe of the Earth's surface, which accounts for more than two-thirds of the world's oceans, will no longer be a commons where anything goes – at least, that is the plan. Of course, humanity isn't aiming to stop fishing entirely. But what would the seas look like if we did decide to permanently abscond from it? Asking this simple question can provide a surprising insight into the profound impact we are currently having on the planet's largest ecosystem – and reveal what we can do to help it recover. A new abundance For decades after the Bikini Atoll experiments, the islands were a place of ghosts – other than caretakers, no humans have lived there since the 1950s. So, when Palumbi rolled off the boat into the atoll's central lagoon in 2016, together with his colleague Elora López-Nandam – now a postdoctoral researcher at California Academy of Sciences – they had no idea what they would find. After all, even the coconuts strewn across local beaches are radioactive. please log in to view this image The nuclear weapons detonated at Bikini Atoll vaporised three islands (Credit: Alamy) The pair were diving in Bravo Crater, a basin 75m (246ft) deep and 1.5km (0.9 miles) wide in the north of the island chain. The water column there is relatively low in radiation, with amounts comparable to background levels in most of the world. But the sediment on the bottom tells another story – to this day, it has high concentrations of radioactive plutonium, americium and bismuth, higher than anywhere else in the Marshall Islands. This is where, on the morning of 1 March 1954, the US conducted its largest ever thermonuclear test. Over six decades later, Palumbi and his colleague were awed by what they saw. The centre of the crater is still relatively barren, with just a thick layer of silt. But at the edges, they found a hidden refuge, where rainbow shoals of small fish circled boulder corals the size of small cars, and the distinctive torpedo-like forms of blacktip and grey reef sharks were omnipresent. "It's mind-blowing," says Palumbi. Despite battling the effects of radiation, which is thought to have created a population of mutant sharks missing their second dorsal fins, the reef was very much alive. And the fish were giants – at least, compared to those you would find in places that are regularly plundered for their fish. This is the most obvious consequence of abandoning fishing – there would be more fish, and they would be much bigger than modern generations are used to. A rapid response Back in March 2006, George W Bush – the then-US president – was watching television at the White House. According to popular rumour, on the programme that day was a PBS documentary about the Northwest Hawaiian Islands, a remote archipelago in the Pacific. He was apparently so enchanted, that he immediately began looking into ways to protect them. With the help of an obscure, century-old law, he created the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument – now the largest marine conservation area in the world. Unlike vast expanses of other marine protected areas, which still allow fishing – no-take zones represent just a fifth of this category – the new reserve imposed a total ban. The impact was almost immediate. "We started to see effects after about one and a half years," says John Lynham, a professor of economics at the University of Hawaiʻi who specialises in ocean recovery. There was more marine life around overall, with the speediest recoveries from species that were previously harvested the most heavily, he says. Amazingly, yellowfin and bigeye tuna were among the first to respond – although they're apex predators and adults average at least 6ft (1.8m) in length, they're fast-growing. Like at Bikini Atoll, other notable reprises have been total accidents. Take the advent of World War Two in September 1939. For the next six years, the North Sea was almost entirely devoid of fishing. With large, sturdy designs and clear, open decks, fishing trawlers were relatively easy to convert into minesweepers – warships that scoured the oceans for mines and discharged them. Along with the dangers posed by mines, warships and bombing to civilian fleets, this meant there were very few active fishing vessels for the entire duration of the war. please log in to view this image Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument is home to one of the rarest marine mammals on Earth, the Hawaiian monk seal (Credit: Getty Images) Fish in the North Sea took full advantage, and their numbers exploded. The oldest individuals benefitted first. Where many would usually have been caught, they got to hang around – and eventually reproduce. This led to more babies, and in turn, a larger population in the next generation. And so on, and on, in a process that's been compared to a Mexican wave. (Tragically, when regular operations resumed, it's thought that the post-war abundance of fish may have contributed to a fishing boom that led to an unprecedented exploitation of their world.) Of course, no matter how seriously humanity takes its imaginary fishing ban, some damage will never be reversed. The tragedy of overfishing means that many marine species have already vanished from the oceans forever. Even for those that remain, there are many other barriers in the way of a full recovery, from habitat loss to local extinctions. However, perhaps the most striking effect of a global moratorium on fishing would be the sharks. A predator boom In a corner of the Museum of Zoology in Lausanne, propped up on a pedestal, is a slightly odd-looking great white shark. With an unusually upturned snout and jaws curled into a shy smile, it contains all that remains of an individual caught in 1956. Most of the fish's body is a model, a somewhat artistic interpretation of the real-life animal, with just her fins and teeth. Measuring 5.9m (19.4ft) long, she was almost the size of a speed boat. But what's particularly remarkable about this giant is where she was found: not in South Africa, Australia, Florida, or any of the usual shark-infested waters. Instead, she was apprehended near Sète, off the coast of southeast France. This was one of Europe's last great white sharks. In fact, it's thought that the Mediterranean was once swarming with sharks. Hammerhead, blue, mackerel and thresher sharks lived alongside an ancient population of great whites that inhabited the area for 450,000 years. In 2010, research led by Chrysoula Gubili – a researcher at the Fisheries Research Institute, Greece – concluded that they may have originally got there when a lone female took a wrong turn. Today there are still some large sharks lurking in the Mediterranean, including the occasional native great white – they're endangered, with too few sightings to estimate how many. But for those shark species for whom data is available, numbers in Europe's favourite swimming spot have declined by between 96 and 99.99% since records began in the early 19th Century. You might also like: What would a green world cup look like? What if polluters paid for climate change loss and damage? What would happen if we had limitless green energy? The main beneficiaries of these absent sharks have been prey animals, particularly smaller fish. One analysis, using data stretching back to 1880, estimated that the total biomass of predatory fish in the world's oceans has declined by two-thirds over the last century alone – while at the same time, the biomass of smaller species has increased. please log in to view this image Today there is an abundance of hubcap-sized coconut crabs on Bikini Island – though the animals are radioactive (Credit: Getty Images) In a world without fishing, Lynham believes that these lost pescatarians would soon return – at least, those that aren't already extinct. Then we'd start to see a rebalancing of the ocean ecosystem. "There's probably over time, going to be more top predators, and that may actually lead to lower abundances of species that they feed on," he says. Fish that have been exploiting the absence of Mediterranean sharks might suddenly find that they are dinner. And though most sharks are peaceful sea-puppies, with little interest in consuming humans, it's also possible that turning away from fishing could lead to a small increase in already-low numbers of shark attacks on humans. For example, some experts believe that the success of a shark conservation programme around Long Island might have contributed to an increase in the number of bites in recent years, none of which have been fatal. However, there would also be some more surprising consequences for the world's oceans. One is a reduction in plastic. A hidden benefit Though plastic bags, cotton buds, straws, cigarettes and food packaging are starving, drowning, entangling and poisoning millions of marine animals every year – and contributing to the microplastics contaminating the food chain – the vast majority of large plastic in the oceans isn't ordinary rubbish. It comes from fishing. Take the North Pacific subtropical gyre – an immense system of circulating ocean currents that is home to some of the oceans' most enchanting wildlife, with whales, sharks, sea turtles and fish. This open ocean ecosystem is over 1,000 miles (1,600km) from land. And yet, it is most famous as a trash vortex – a system that has trapped mind-boggling quantities of human rubbish, giving it another name, the North Pacific Garbage Patch. please log in to view this image In the absence of fishing, many other marine animals benefit too – with more food to eat, healthier habitats and a lower risk of becoming bycatch (Credit: Getty Images) According to a study published last year, more than three quarters of the larger debris trapped in this floating rubbish pile comes from so-called "ghost" fishing gear – nets, ropes and lines that continue to prove deadly to ocean wildlife, long after they are discarded from the side of a fishing boat. CARBON COUNT The emissions from travel it took to report this story were 0kg CO2. The digital emissions from this story are an estimated 1.2g to 3.6g CO2 per page view. Find out more about how we calculated this figure here. Of course, in a post-fishing world, the existing rubbish in our seas would not just disappear. For the plastic that makes it to the deepest parts of the ocean, the process of breakdown could be especially slow. According to one estimate, polyethylene may take up to 292 years to be fully degraded on the deep sea floor, while other plastic will likely last for far longer. Over time, the amount of plastic in our seas would decrease – so long as humans didn’t compensate for it by throwing more plastic into the ocean from elsewhere. But even if we stopped polluting the oceans with this equipment tomorrow, the last fishing line wouldn’t fully degrade until the year 2623, according to the findings of another study. In the meantime, plastic pollution could continue its killing spree – currently it is thought to lead to the deaths of around a million marine animals every year. Finally, there's climate change. The deep oceans are a graveyard – when larger creatures such as big fish, sharks or whales die, they sink to the bottom, where they often become entombed in anoxic sediment – a natural preservative that prevents them from decomposing fully and traps the carbon in their bodies for millennia. But over the last century, humanity has emptied the world's oceans of their giants. As a result, this carbon sink has not been operating at its usual capacity – and unprecedented numbers of the fish that remain in the ocean will eventually release their carbon back into the atmosphere. According to one analysis, this means fishing has released at least 0.73 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide since 1950, roughly similar to the entire emissions of Germany in 2021. That's not to mention the destructive power of specific fishing techniques, like trawling, which disturbs carbon-trapping sediment on the seafloor, leading to annual emissions equivalent to the entire aviation industry. please log in to view this image Nuclear tests at the Bikini Atoll contaminated a wide area with radiation, though the fish are now considered safe to eat (Credit: Getty Images) A balancing act However, Palumbi is keen to stress that a world without fishing would also have major drawbacks – particularly for those people who currently rely on the oceans for their income, staple diet or as a source of protein. "If we were only talking about oceanic mechanised industrial fishing fleets, that's one thing. But we also have to really remember that there's hundreds of millions of people at least that rely on very small-scale subsistence fisheries," he says. "Fishing plays a pretty important role for a lot of people's lives." One possible way out is aquaculture, which already produces more than half of the total seafood consumed today. The approach comes with many challenges – from infesting wild salmon with sea lice to the difficulty of checking up on the welfare of underwater farm animals – but many organisations, including the UN, have suggested that it could help to make our exploitation of the oceans more sustainable. (Read more from BBC Future about the most environmentally friendly seafood.) Alternatively, just switching to more sustainable practices alone could have a staggering impact on the productivity of the oceans – with benefits for both people and wildlife. If they were adopted globally, catches could increase by 16 million tonnes – enough to feed 75 million more people – according to an estimate by the Marine Stewardship Council. There is more good news. Unlike many of the animals our species has overexploited on land, fish have an astonishing capacity to recover. While a cheetah can only have a handful of babies at one time – with three months of pregnancy and about 18 months per litter to train them to survive – an equivalent apex predator in the oceans, such as a tuna, can produce up to 30 million eggs at a time. "Now a lot of those little eggs don't survive, of course, but the potential for a population to rebound generation by generation [is huge]," says Palumbi. For the moment, the idea that humanity would vacate the planet's oceans is as unlikely as it is contentious. But if larger swathes of the world's oceans were allowed to return to their former abundance – as with the Bikini Atoll and Marine National Monument in Hawaii – for many marine organisms, the last century could soon just be a small hiccup in the long, thriving history of their species.
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Chandrayaan-3: Historic India Moon mission sends new photos of lunar surface Published 13 hours ago Share Related Topics Chandrayaan programme please log in to view this image IMAGE SOURCE,ISRO Image caption, A series of images sent by Chandrayaan-3 show the craters on the lunar surface getting larger and larger as the spacecraft gets closer By Geeta Pandey BBC News, Delhi India's space agency has released the first images of the Moon taken by the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft, which entered lunar orbit on Saturday. The images show craters on lunar surface getting larger and larger as the spacecraft draws closer. Chandrayaan-3's lander and rover are due to reach the surface on 23 August. If successful, India will be the first country to perform a controlled "soft landing" near the south pole. ADVERTISEMENT It will also become only the fourth to achieve a soft landing on the Moon after the US, the former Soviet Union and China. After the spacecraft orbited the Earth for about 10 days, it was sent into the translunar orbit last Tuesday and successfully injected into the lunar orbit on Saturday. India mission enters Moon orbit, aiming for south pole Indian Space Research Agency (Isro) said that all checks showed that Chandrayaan-3 was in good "health". It has also pointed out that "this is the third time in succession that Isro has successfully injected a spacecraft into the lunar orbit". Scientists say Chandrayaan-3, the third in India's programme of lunar exploration, is expected to build on the success of its earlier Moon missions. Historic India Moon mission lifts off successfully It comes 13 years after the country's first Moon mission in 2008, which discovered the presence of water molecules on the parched lunar surface and established that the Moon has an atmosphere during daytime. Chandrayaan-2 - which also comprised an orbiter, a lander and a rover - was launched in July 2019 but it was only partially successful. Its orbiter continues to circle and study the Moon even today, but the lander-rover failed to make a soft landing and crashed during touchdown. please log in to view this image please log in to view this image Isro chief Sreedhara Panicker Somanath has said India's space agency had carefully studied the data from its crash and carried out simulation exercises to fix the glitches in Chandrayaan-3, which weighs 3,900kg and cost 6.1bn rupees ($75m; £58m). The lander (called Vikram, after the founder of Isro) weighs about 1,500kg and carries within its belly the 26kg rover which is named Pragyaan, the Sanskrit word for wisdom. Was India's Moon mission actually a success? The women scientists who took India into space Now that the craft has entered the Moon's orbit, scientists will begin reducing the rocket's speed gradually to bring it to a point which will allow a soft landing for Vikram. "A series of manoeuvres have been planned to gradually reduce the spacecraft's orbit and position it over the lunar poles," says Isro. "After some manoeuvres, the propulsion module will separate from the lander while in orbit. Then a series of complex braking manoeuvres will be executed to facilitate a soft landing in the South Pole region of the Moon on 23 August," it adds. Once it lands, the six-wheeled rover will eject and roam around the rocks and craters on the Moon's surface, gathering crucial data and images to be sent back to Earth for analysis. Media caption, Watch: The moment India launched historic Moon mission "The rover is carrying five instruments which will focus on finding out about the physical characteristics of the surface of the Moon, the atmosphere close to the surface and the tectonic activity to study what goes on below the surface. I'm hoping we'll find something new," Mr Somanath has said. The south pole of the Moon is still largely unexplored - the surface area that remains in shadow there is much larger than that of the Moon's north pole, and scientists say it means there is a possibility of water in areas that are permanently shadowed. please log in to view this image please log in to view this image
Tantalising sign of possible life on faraway world Published 6 hours ago Share please log in to view this image IMAGE SOURCE,NASA Image caption, Artwork: K2-18 b orbits a cool dwarf star shown in red just far enough away for its temperature to support life. By Pallab Ghosh Science correspondent Nasa's James Webb Space Telescope may have discovered tentative evidence of a sign of life on a faraway planet. It may have detected a molecule called dimethyl sulphide (DMS). On Earth, at least, this is only produced by life. The researchers stress that the detection on the planet 120 light years away is "not robust" and more data is needed to confirm its presence. Researchers have also detected methane and CO2 in the planet's atmosphere. ADVERTISEMENT Detection of these gases could mean the planet, named K2-18b, has a water ocean. Prof Nikku Madhusudhan, of the University of Cambridge, who led the research, told BBC News that his entire team were ''shocked'' when they saw the results. "On Earth, DMS is only produced by life. The bulk of it in Earth's atmosphere is emitted from phytoplankton in marine environments," he said. Caution But Prof Madhusudhan described the detection of DMS as tentative and said that more data would be needed to confirm its presence. Those results are expected in a year. ''If confirmed, it would be a huge deal and I feel a responsibility to get this right if we are making such a big claim.'' It is the first time astronomers have detected the possibility of DMS in a planet orbiting a distant star. But they are treating the results with caution, noting that a claim made in 2020 about the presence of another molecule, called phosphine, that could be produced by living organisms in the clouds of Venus was disputed a year later. Even so, Dr Robert Massey, who is independent of the research and deputy director of the Royal Astronomical Society in London, said he was excited by the results. ''We are slowly moving towards the point where we will be able to answer that big question as to whether we are alone in the Universe or not," he said. ''I'm optimistic that we will one day find signs of life. Perhaps it will be this, perhaps in 10 or even 50 years we will have evidence that is so compelling that it is the best explanation.'' JWST is able to analyse the light that passes through the faraway planet's atmosphere. That light contains the chemical signature of molecules in its atmosphere. The details can be deciphered by splitting the light into its constituent frequencies - rather like a prism creating a rainbow spectrum. If parts of the resulting spectrum are missing, it has been absorbed by chemicals in the planet's atmosphere, enabling researchers to discover its composition. please log in to view this image IMAGE SOURCE,ESA Image caption, Artwork: The James Webb Space Telescope is capable of analysing tiny flecks of light from the atmospheres of distant planets The feat is all the more remarkable because the planet is more than 1.1 million billion km away, so the amount of light reaching the space telescope is tiny. As well as DMS, the spectral analysis detected an abundance of the gases methane and carbon dioxide with a good degree of confidence. The proportions of CO2 and methane are consistent with there being a water ocean underneath a hydrogen-rich atmosphere. Nasa's Hubble telescope had detected the presence of water vapour previously, which is why the planet, which has been named K2-18b, was one of the first to be investigated by the vastly more powerful JWST, but the possibility of an ocean is a big step forward. Recipe for life The ability of a planet to support life depends on its temperature, the presence of carbon and probably liquid water. Observations from JWST seem to suggest that that K2-18b ticks all those boxes. But just because a planet has the potential to support life it doesn't mean that it does, which is why the possible presence of DMS is so tantalising. What makes the planet even more intriguing is that it is not like the Earth-like, so called rocky planets, discovered orbiting distant stars that are candidates for life. K2-18b is nearly nine times the size of Earth. Exoplanets - which are planets orbiting other stars - which have sizes between those of Earth and Neptune, are unlike anything in our solar system. This means that these 'sub-Neptunes' are poorly understood, as is the nature their atmospheres, according to Dr Subhajit Sarkar of Cardiff University, who is another member of the analysis team. "Although this kind of planet does not exist in our solar system, sub-Neptunes are the most common type of planet known so far in the galaxy," he said. "We have obtained the most detailed spectrum of a habitable-zone sub-Neptune to date, and this allowed us to work out the molecules that exist in its atmosphere."
