Global Fisheries Catches From 1950-2004

The Sea Around Us Project

http://seaaroundus.org/

Overfishing, driven by subsidies of over $30 billion USD per year, has depleted fish populations worldwide, and is compromising ecosystem structure and function. The costs are becoming increasingly unacceptable. We have assembled global databases of catches, distributions of commercial marine species, countries fishing access agreements, ex-vessel prices, marine protected areas and other data, and mapped these. This information, integrated using powerful new analyses, enabled us to illustrate worrying ecosystem impacts of fisheries.

This Google Earth layer presents the data in three ways:
1. Clickable points that provide static summaries of total catches made in countries' territories and on the high seas;
2. A dynamic animation of the annual catch rates (in tonnes per square km per year), showing where fisheries started, collapsed, and subsequently moved to;
3. A dynamic animation of the spread of fisheries catch across the globe.

http://earth.google.com/gallery/images/small/global_fisheries_catch_sm.jpg

http://earth.google.com/gallery/images/large/global_fisheries_catch_lg.jpg

Open in Google Earth