Indigenous Peoples Of The World’s Coastlines Are Losing Their Fisheries

"The world loves seafood. According to some estimates, people consumed about 102 million tons of it last year.

A new study released Friday by the Nippon Foundation-Nereus Program, based at the University of British Columbia, shows that indigenous people who live on the world’s coasts are definitely hooked. They consume 15 times more seafood per capita than people in other parts of the world, about 2.3 million tons, or about 2 percent of the global catch, the study said.

They don’t simply catch and eat fish and other seafood. It’s the heart of communities, the center of culture and religion, a gift from the heavens. Seafood is crucial to the cultures of coastal indigenous people in the Americas, Asia, Africa and the Arctic, among other places, and overfishing and the ocean-wide movement of fish due to climate change could wipe those resources out.

On the coast of Africa at the equator, huge commercial ships are starting to encroach on native fishing areas as ocean stocks diminish. In places such as Madagascar, the stocks of community fisheries have been nearly lost."

Darryl Fears reports for the Washington Post December 2, 2016.