Global fishery prospects under contrasting management regimes.

Data from 4,713 fisheries worldwide, representing 78% of global reported fish catch, are analyzed to estimate the status, trends, and benefits of alternative approaches to recovering depleted fisheries. For each fishery, we estimate current biological status and forecast the impacts of contrasting management regimes on catch, profit, and biomass of fish in the sea. We estimate unique recovery targets and trajectories for each fishery, calculate the year-by-year effects of alternative recovery approaches, and model how alternative institutional reforms affect recovery outcomes. Current status is highly heterogeneous-the median fishery is in poor health (overfished, with further overfishing occurring), although 32% of fisheries are in good biological, although not necessarily economic, condition. Our business-as-usual scenario projects further divergence and continued collapse for many of the world's fisheries. Applying sound management reforms to global fisheries in our dataset could generate annual increases exceeding 16 million metric tons (MMT) in catch, $53 billion in profit, and 619 MMT in biomass relative to business as usual. We also find that, with appropriate reforms, recovery can happen quickly, with the median fishery taking under 10 y to reach recovery targets. Our results show that commonsense reforms to fishery management would dramatically improve overall fish abundance while increasing food security and profits.

Recognize fish as food in policy discourse and development funding.

The international development community is off-track from meeting targets for alleviating global malnutrition. Meanwhile, there is growing consensus across scientific disciplines that fish plays a crucial role in food and nutrition security. However, this 'fish as food' perspective has yet to translate into policy and development funding priorities. We argue that the traditional framing of fish as a natural resource emphasizes economic development and biodiversity conservation objectives, whereas situating fish within a food systems perspective can lead to innovative policies and investments that promote nutrition-sensitive and socially equitable capture fisheries and aquaculture. This paper highlights four pillars of research needs and policy directions toward this end. Ultimately, recognizing and working to enhance the role of fish in alleviating hunger and malnutrition can provide an additional long-term development incentive, beyond revenue generation and biodiversity conservation, for governments, international development organizations, and society more broadly to invest in the sustainability of capture fisheries and aquaculture.

Coastal urbanization influences human pathogens and microdebris contamination in seafood.

Seafood is one of the leading imported products implicated in foodborne outbreaks worldwide. Coastal marine environments are being increasingly subjected to reduced water quality from urbanization and leading to contamination of important fishery species. Given the importance of seafood exchanged as a global protein source, it is imperative to maintain seafood safety worldwide. To illustrate the potential health risks associated with urbanization in a coastal environment, we use next-generation high-throughput amplicon sequencing of the 16S ribosomal RNA gene combined with infrared spectroscopy to characterize and quantify a vast range of potential human bacterial pathogens and microdebris contaminants in seawater, sediment and an important oyster fishery along the Mergui Archipelago in Myanmar. Through the quantification of >1.25 million high-quality bacterial operational taxonomic unit (OTU) reads, we detected 5459 potential human bacterial pathogens belonging to 87 species that are commonly associated with gut microbiota and an indication of terrestrial runoff of human and agricultural waste. Oyster tissues contained 51% of all sequenced bacterial pathogens that are considered to be both detrimental and of emerging concern to human health. Using infrared spectroscopy, we examined a total of 1225 individual microdebris particles, from which we detected 78 different types of contaminant materials. The predominant microdebris contaminants recovered from oyster tissues included polymers (48%), followed by non-native minerals (20%), oils (14%) and milk supplement powders (14%). Emerging technologies provide novel insights into the impacts of coastal development on food security and risks to human and environmental health.

Plastic waste associated with disease on coral reefs.

Plastic waste can promote microbial colonization by pathogens implicated in outbreaks of disease in the ocean. We assessed the influence of plastic waste on disease risk in 124,000 reef-building corals from 159 reefs in the Asia-Pacific region. The likelihood of disease increases from 4% to 89% when corals are in contact with plastic. Structurally complex corals are eight times more likely to be affected by plastic, suggesting that microhabitats for reef-associated organisms and valuable fisheries will be disproportionately affected. Plastic levels on coral reefs correspond to estimates of terrestrial mismanaged plastic waste entering the ocean. We estimate that 11.1 billion plastic items are entangled on coral reefs across the Asia-Pacific and project this number to increase 40% by 2025. Plastic waste management is critical for reducing diseases that threaten ecosystem health and human livelihoods.