An Exhausted Ocean

Divers come from around the world to experience the vibrant marine life in Mexico’s Cabo Pulmo National Park. Years ago, this very spot was largely depleted due to overfishing and habitat loss. But when the community and conservation partners joined together to protect this coastal area, fish stocks rebounded. A true conservation success story, now both nature and local communities benefit from sustainable practices. Unfortunately, most of the ocean remains at risk, and sites just outside of this protected space could soon become desolate. This just shows, however, the impact and opportunities gained from acting together to tackle risks to ocean health—like harmful fisheries subsidies.

Mobula rays gather by the hundreds, thousands, and even tens of thousands in the nutrient-rich waters off Baja California Sur. Like their cousins the manta rays, mobula rays live long, mature slowly, and birth just one pup every few years, making them very vulnerable to overexploitation. Their populations continue to decline steeply across the globe, as vast numbers are caught in gill nets and longline fisheries, many of which are heavily subsidized. In Mexico, like in many places around the world, fisheries subsidies have led to larger fleets but reduced productivity, as overfishing causes catches to decline alongside fish populations.

Two women carry a basket of small, freshly caught fish to sell at the local market in Lakey, Sumbawa, Indonesia. Small-scale fishers account for 89% of Indonesia’s fisheries output, yet they are also among the poorest communities in the country. Already highly vulnerable to the impacts of global warming and land-based pollution, overfishing and illegal fishing further strain the country’s fishing sector, threatening Indonesians’ livelihoods and food security. To protect coastal communities across the globe, leaders must ensure that the drivers of overfishing, like harmful subsidies, are addressed.

Vezo fishers present their early morning catch. In Malagasy, the local language, Vezo literally means the people who fish. For the past 2,000 years, they have been navigating the stretch of Indian Ocean separating Madagascar from the African continent in hand-carved pirogues like the one seen here. In recent years, commercialized fishing has shifted local economies from a barter system to a cash-based competitive market, and huge, often subsidized trawlers from foreign nations have decimated the shoals that sustain the Vezos’ ancient lifestyle. As subsidies continue to incentivize unsustainable fishing, Vezo migration and identity are under threat.

A young Vezo fisherman wrestles with an octopus stuck to his arm in warm Indian Ocean waters off the Madagascar coast. Octopi are critical to the economy of his small fishing community. A switch to fishing commercially has pressed the Vezo people to catch more than what is sustainable, imperilling the area’s unique marine environment of coral reefs, mangroves, and seagrass beds. In 2004, local leaders introduced self-imposed rules, allowing the octopus population to bounce back. This success inspired other fishing villages—however, to maintain progress, sustainability and economic incentives such as subsidies must align, including for distant fleets whose fishing affects the same ecosystem.

At first light, thousands of fish are pulled toward the surface by fishers on a commercial purse seiner in the Andaman Sea, just outside of Thailand’s Mu Koh Lanta National Park. Since the subsidy-assisted explosion of industrial fisheries in the 1960s, catch per unit effort in the Andaman Sea has declined by over 75%. As fish populations continue to shrink, the thriving industry that allows Thailand to be among the world's largest seafood exporters will be increasingly impacted. Left unchecked, subsidies meant to help the fishing industry and those who rely on it can ultimately contribute to its collapse.

A tourist dips her hand into a swarm of plankton attracted to the nighttime lights of the dive boat as they are devoured in huge gulps by a whale shark. The largest living fish, whale sharks are harmless to humans, and the tourism they bring to the Maldives and elsewhere provides substantial economic benefits to local communities. Unfortunately, demand for their fins has put them under severe pressure from overfishing. They also regularly become bycatch, getting tangled up in non-selective fishing nets—which in many areas are supplied to fishers by governments as a subsidy. Without action, these endangered gentle giants will face increasing pressure, threatening their future and the tourism that depends on them.

An Urak Lawoi diver in homemade diving equipment carries a fish trap as he runs along the bottom of the sea in Thailand’s Mu Koh Tarutao National Park. The Urak Lawoi are an Aboriginal Malay people who live in small communities along the southern Andaman coast of Thailand. Although the Urak Lawoi have adapted to the modern lifestyle as visitors flock to the Adang-Rawi Archipelago, they still heavily rely on small-scale fishing as their primary profession. If overfishing is allowed to continue unchecked, the entire way of life for these traditional fishers will be put at risk.

A massive, spellbinding ball of dogtooth tuna completely surrounds the photographer during a frigidly cold morning dive in the Galápagos Islands. Although the shallow, nutrient-rich sea that the tuna call home is protected, industrial foreign fishing fleets, many bolstered by subsidies, lurk at the edge of the reserve’s territorial waters. Artisanal fishers in the area are already making increasingly longer trips for a smaller catch. Conservationists have been sounding the alarm, saying that unprecedented pressure from overfishing now threatens marine life in the world-renowned archipelago.

Senegalese fishermen enjoy roasted fish for dinner on their boat. As many stocks continue to decline due to overfishing, West African artisanal fishers have to drive further and further from shore to get enough fish for sale or face coming back empty handed. This can be largely attributed to the influx of often subsidy-fuelled industrial fleets from other countries into their waters. If these harmful subsidies continue and, with them, the intense overfishing depleting West Africa’s waters, food and livelihood security will continue to deteriorate, and many fishers may be forced to abandon tradition and find other ways to support their communities.