Overview
The global ocean teems with life, and it contributes to the vital cycles that keep people and our planet healthy. But the seas are vulnerable to overfishing, loss of habitat such as seagrasses and mangroves, ineffective fisheries management, plastic pollution, and declining biodiversity. These mounting losses affect the coastal communities that depend on the ocean for food and jobs.
Pew’s ocean work supports efforts to build collaborative governance systems to guide activities like fishing, pollution, and conservation, and to create protected areas that maintain and restore the health of marine ecosystems. These activities not only support nature, they also benefit the people who rely on marine resources for their livelihoods.
Over decades of international negotiation, the nations of the world have committed to the sustainable management of fisheries and protection of marine ecosystems. Multiple treaties and conventions require fishery managers to account for the impact of fishing activity on the health of the entire ecosystem, not just targeted fish stocks.
In December 2022, 196 member governments of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity agreed to an ambitious plan to safeguard the natural world: the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF). Signatory nations pledged to drastically reduce threats to wildlife and ecosystems and to help people better live in harmony with nature.
Illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing is a serious global problem that threatens the health and stability of ocean ecosystems and places strain on the food and economic security of coastal communities. It is frequently linked to fraud, corruption, human trafficking, modern slavery and other crimes, and poses grave risks to the safety, health and security of fishers and vessels at sea.
Temporary and season-long closures of fishing areas are increasingly used as a tool to protect whales, especially the endangered North Atlantic right whale, from entanglement in fishing gear. To enable harvesters to fish safely in these closed areas, on-demand systems—a modern configuration of traditional gear that removes the end lines on fixed traps or trawls—offer a promising solution.
Regional fisheries management organizations, known as RFMOs, are key international entities responsible for the conservation and management of many of the world’s most valuable commercial fish stocks, including tunas worth more than $40 billion a year, as well as other highly migratory species, such as swordfish, sharks and rays.
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The global ocean teems with life, and it contributes to the vital cycles that keep people and our planet healthy. But the seas are vulnerable to overfishing, loss of habitat such as seagrasses and mangroves, ineffective fisheries management, plastic pollution, and declining biodiversity. These mounting losses affect the coastal communities that depend on the ocean for food and jobs.
Latest In Protect Marine Life
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Conserving natural spaces conveys benefits far beyond the gains to wildlife and their habitats. As scores of studies show, protecting and restoring lands and waters, particularly when done in close partnership with local communities, also improves people’s lives—and local economies—by increasing tourism and outdoor recreation.