"Ecosystem Overfishing In The Ocean"

The peer reviewed journal "Ecosystem Overfishing In The Ocean" calculated sustainability levels and secondary production levels to find whether or not Large Marine Ecosystems (LME's for short) are being exploited and overfished. The results were these:

-"From 2000 to 2004, several LME areas suffered high losses in secondary production due to fishing and had fisheries with low sustainability levels...This was especially evident for systems located in East Asia, Northern Europe, North Atlantic, and the Pacific coast of South America."
---What this means is that fish in these areas are not reproducing enough fish to keep the population high and there are low levels of fish as a result of Overfishing.

The journal goes on to say that the systems with the lowest sustainability levels were in the following regions (numbers in parentheses indicate the percent sustainability levels)

IN THE TEMPERATE & HIGH LATITUDE LME'S
-Sea of Japan (40.9%)
-West Greenland Shelf (33.2%)
-Norwegian Shelf (27.4%)
-North Sea (24.2%)
-North-eastern US Continental Shelf (22.9%)
-Faroe Plateau (15.1%)
-Iceland Shelf (14.3%)
-Yellow Sea (12.9%)

IN THE TROPICAL LME'S (less severe)
-Sulu-Celebes Sea (37.9%)
-Gulf of Mexico (35.4%)

THIS INFORMATION IN PICTURE FORM...













The lower the Psust (percent sustainability level), the more overfished the area is (extreme overfishing shown by red, orange, and yellow areas).