Overfishing risks ocean deserts as stocks plummet

The best fish farmers offering the safest product will be the big winners in the future.

Or robot fish, robots can solve a lot sticky situations and be cute to boot. Seriously every year for decades this has been talked about and aside from some European countries vested national interests veto any curtailing of their methods. It's a suicidal model they operate on, their business will suffer! Be defunct unless serious steps are taken.

When I was a child growing up in England going to the fish and chip shop meant cod and chips.  A cheap alternative was haddock.  Cod now is a luxury fish IF you can find any anywhere.  Om my first visit to NZ in the mid 80's I told the people at work that I had cooked some bread crumbed gurnard.  Cat food! they cried.  Now 40 dollars a kilo.  Back in the eighties the fishermen off the Canadian coast were warned that fish stocks were getting desperately low.  But they carried on the same regardless.  And then one year, they went fishing and there were no fish.  There still aren't.  Those coastal fishing towns are now ghost towns.  And yet we still carry on raping the oceans hoping eventually, if not now, then later, it will all work out OK.  But it won't.

@SimondB You can get cod in UK chip shops, supermarkets and restaurants now. Cod fishing was restricted due to diminishing stocks, but the levels are now sustainable again. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jul/19/sustainable-british-cod-on-the-menu-after-stocks-recover

According to Didier Gascuel, a researcher at Ifremer, which monitors the health of oceans, global fish stocks "could fall so low that it's no longer viable to go fishing

This is what will bring change, when the profits disappear, then the overfishing will too, but as SimonB notes, it will be LONG LONG time for the fish stocks to recover and how they will recover in acidified sea water that is polluted beyond imagination is beyond me! For conservatives, not a worry!

zichi, to misquote, the greedy are always with us. Sadly for most people out of sight is out of mind and so long as they can get what they want on a daily basis they give not a thought to any consequence of their actions, until it affects them personally by which time it is far too late.

Fishing Quotas need to be rethought.

Instead of throwing excess fish back to the sea (dead) take them back , and make Fish based Leather out of them.

Over-fishing is definitely a big issue, and nowhere else other than the UK / European waters will soon come up as being a big problem, perhaps resulting in localised Conflict.

But also, pollution, is another issue impacting smaller localised fishing operations - large industrial / construction events have an impact there too. So depending upon region, Fishing Management needs to have a better oversight Locally, Regionally and Globally.