The Washington Post reports that scientists are attempting fish counts as concerns about over fishing continue to rise. Counting fish is no easy task and correct counts are often ignored for political reasons -- typically with disastrous results.
What is clear is that over the past century, the world's fish stocks have shrunk. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization says that one-quarter of the world's marine stocks are overfished, or harvested faster than the fish can reproduce to replace them, and another half are approaching that point.
Nearly half of the two dozen fisheries managed by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission are listed as depleted or unknown, including the American lobster, red drum and river herring.
The loss of a stock even temporarily, scientists say, can cost the industry hundreds of millions of dollars and echo throughout the ecosystem, affecting humans, too.
But measuring nature's bounty remains a challenge. Where science leaves a gap, politics rushes in.
In 1992, the collapse of the North Atlantic cod fishery, which devastated Canadian and American fishermen and uprooted entire towns, came about partly because politicians ignored dismal harvest figures in favor of more optimistic forecasts, scientists say.
Some fish can be raised in fish farms but if we overfish our rivers and oceans there will be no way to replenish the stocks of some fish.
