Future of marine animal populations (FMAP)

I introduce research activities of the Future of Marine Animal Populations (F-MAP), a theoretical project of Census of Marine Life (CoML). Ransom Myers, who was a leader of F-MAP until he passed away in 2007, was chosen as one of the world's top ten movers and shakers who will change the way the world operates over the next 75 years by Fortune magazine because his research suggested marine ecosystem crisis. He estimated a drastic reduction of tunas and other top predators of marine ecosystems with Boris Worm. In 2006, Boris Worm and his coauthors predicted that future fisheries resources will go extinct until 2048. These projections of marine ecosystem crises are recognized as one of the most valuable outcomes by CoML. Myers and his coauthors used the catch per unit effort (CPUE) data of Japanese long-line fisheries and they assumed that the stock abundance of tunas is proportional to the CPUE of tuna fisheries. However, the linear relationship between CPUE and stock abundance is controversial. FAO (United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization) reported that the magnitude of tuna stock reduction is much smaller. In the 5th World Fisheries Congress held in Yokohama in 2008, Meryl Williams, a Steering Committee member of CoML, introduced these criticisms and she concluded that (1) key conclusions of Myers and Worm was not supported but (2) produced clear and compelling narratives. Another theory of marine ecosystem crisis is 'fishing down' by Daniel Pauly. He and his coauthors analyzed the average trophic level of fisheries landings by two huge database FISHSTAT and FISHBASE, and showed that the average trophic level decreased at least in north Atlantic and marine coastal areas. This decline of average trophic level is called 'fishing down'. Fishing down suggests overfishing because world fisheries exploit top predators that are high price, top predators are exhausted, and fisheries were forced to depend on fish of lower trophic levels. The average trophic level of Japanese fisheries showed no decline within the past half century because Japanese fisheries catch a variety of fish species including sardine. I propose another indicator that suggests unsustainable fisheries in Japan. The frequency of fisheries resources whose catch amount is larger than its long-term average is consistently decreasing from 1970s to the present.