The inexorable plunge of the world’s fish stocks continued apace this year. It was underlined by an unprecedented collaboration of a dozen research institutions, which briefly grabbed headlines with the warning that the world’s commercial fisheries could vanish by 2050.
The scientists behind the report might have preferred it if more emphasis had been given to their finding that we could make things better – often surprisingly quickly – by protecting and restoring the entire marine food web. Every species, however humble, has a part to play in this, and the report advocated setting up marine protected areas to help…
