Fisheries Improving? (broadcast Friday, July 31st, 2009)

Fishermen and their catch in Kenya. Photo by Josh Cinner.

Steps taken to curb overfishing around the world may be beginning to show results. Writing in the journal Science, an international consortium of researchers reports that a two-year study of major fisheries indicates that the practices may be having some effect, with five of the ten large marine ecosystems that they examined showing some improvements.

"The encouraging result is that exploitation rate – the ultimate driver of depletion and collapse – is decreasing in half of the ten systems we examined in detail," said Boris Worm, one of the authors of the report. "Across all regions we are still seeing a troubling trend of increasing stock collapse. But this paper shows that our oceans are not a lost cause." We'll talk with Worm about the group's findings.