Fishing down the food web is the process described by Prof Daniel Pauly whereby fisheries, "having depleted the large predatory fish on top of the food web, turn to increasingly smaller species, finally ending up with previously spurned small fish & invertebrates"

What does this look like in an Irish context? Here are the landings of finfish & crustaceans in the Irish Sea from 1970 to 2017. Overfishing has hollowed out the ecosystem decimating many fish populations, with unquantified implications for ecosystem functioning.

Here is another look at the collapse in Cod (-97%) and Whiting (-88%) in the Irish Sea over recent decades in terms of catches. Whiting is so overfished that @ICES_ASC have advised that zero fish be caught since 2001.

Fisheries targeting these stocks are no longer the problem. In the present simplified ecosystem bottom trawling for high value crustaceans & molluscs dominates. Fish like Cod are collaterally removed as a bycatch, preventing the recovery of their stocks and the ecosystem

We have literally fished down the marine food web & Nephrops (Dublin Bay Prawn), a small crustacean that lives in burrows in the mud is king.

Despite the legal obligation to #EndOverfishing for all harvested fish species in the EU by 2020 under the reform of the Common Fisheries Policy, quotas for stocks like Irish Sea Whiting are not based on the sustainability of the stock but to cover bycatch in other fisheries.

What does this all mean for the fishing industry. Well for the few fishers who target Nephrops it is big business and politicians listen to big rollers / trawlers. This means that fishing decisions are made based on maintaining the status quo.

Of the 1,991 vessels registered in Ireland over 80% are small inshore vessels (>12m). The collapse of fish stocks has meant a reduction in quota & reduced diversity of fishing options. This lack of resilience has been exposed by the Covid19 pandemic.

Only by adopting an ecosystem based approach to fisheries management can we restore fish stocks & rebuild broken marine ecosystems. Managers must follow scientific advice, #EndOverfishing & integrate marine conservation policies such as #MPA into fisheries management #CFP2020

The prosperity and resilience of our coastal communities are intertwined with the health of our marine ecosystems. Challenges like climate change, Brexit and Covid19 will continue to place strain on our broken ecosystems & social inequalities. Now is the time to #EndOverfishing