Large fish in the open sea have declined by at least 90 percent over the past century due to overexploitation.
To pull fish like tuna, swordfish, and marlin back from the brink, scientists argue we need to protect their migration superhighways known as 'blue corridors'.A recent study on the Pacific Ocean has mapped the busiest of these underwater traffic lanes using a fish's tendency to return to its birthplace.Other fish species also return to their birth location to reproduce, and experts want to use that information to reveal where we need to limit or ban fishing.
If some fish are assumed to return to their spawning grounds, however, then their travels should create an annual loop through certain parts of the ocean. The 11 species considered were skipjack, yellowfin, bigeye tuna, albacore, pacific bluefin tuna, swordfish, common dolphinfish, striped marlin, black marlin, wahoo, and Indo-Pacific sailfish.The results are only tentative and are based on several assumptions, but they provide important clues about where fish might be swimming at certain times of the year.
Below is the final map, showing which areas of the Pacific should receive protection first. The red and orange spots represent ocean regions traversed by all or nearly all of the fish species considered in the study.Habitat use maps for large pelagic species in the Pacific, generated by superposing the habitat use maps of the different stocks.
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