[Coral-List] Economist article on overfishing

[Bill Allison]

with implications for coral reefs through both direct and indirect impacts.

exerpts
Two-thirds of African countries have access to the sea. Some are making
good use of it through fishing and tourism. But the productivity of African
waters is plummeting. Kenyan fishermen now catch an average of 3kg of
lobster on each trip, compared with 28kg in the 1980s. Grouper fish appear
to have become extinct in the Comoros in the 1970s. South Africa’s fishy
haul is lower today than in the 1950s.

The tributaries of Africa’s oceans are mostly clean and its mangroves in
good condition, especially compared with those of Asia. But abuse is
growing. With the sharks almost gone, Chinese diners are demanding manta
rays and mobulid rays as ingredients for their expensive banquet stews.
Frank Pope, an Africa-based writer on oceans, says that the slow-breeding
rays could be gone even sooner than the sharks they used to swim alongside
on the glittering reefs.

http://www.economist.com/node/21547867

-- 
________________________________
Is this how science illuminates "reality"? - "the meaning of an episode was
not inside like a kernel but outside, enveloping the talk which brought it
out only as a glow brings out a haze."
- narrator's comment about Marlow's tale-telling, in Heart of Darkness
(Conrad)