"Overfishing worse than thought"

I think the conclusions here are suspect. The idea that whatever fishing is going unreported is attributable to people fishing for their families. I don't buy that subsistence and recreational fishing is equal to commercial fishing - which is how I am interpreting the articles....

From Nature:

Global fisheries statistics generally paint a grim picture of ocean health, revealing rampant overfishing and declining fish catches in various regions. But a new study suggests that, in the tropics at least, the statistics have been telling only half the depressing story — if that.

Subsistence fishing in the tropics has a much greater impact than previously thought.Punchstock
The work, presented Tuesday at the 11th International Coral Reef Symposium in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, suggests that for fifteen of twenty tropical island nations and territories examined, subsistence and recreational fishing has gone almost completely unreported over the past half-century. Such fishing actually collects a volume of reef fish at least as great as official statistics show, and in most cases much more.

"The whole picture of fisheries that we have is basically wrong," says lead author Daniel Pauly, of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. "The underreporting is of such magnitude that it boggles the mind." The results, say Pauly and his colleagues, have major implications not only for how fisheries are managed in these areas, but also for how long local subsistence fishers can continue to support their families.

Another article: Hawaiian Islands' reef fish declining, study finds

Sharks, jacks, parrot fish and other colorful reef fish are quickly disappearing from coral reefs encircling the Hawaiian Islands, federal scientists reported Tuesday.

The scientists blamed overfishing for the steep decline, which affects three-quarters of the species once commonly found on coral reefs, delighting snorkeling tourists and feeding subsistence fishermen in Hawaii's coastal communities.

Many of these fish, ecologists say, are key to maintaining healthy coral reefs because they keep reefs clean by grazing on algae that can quickly overgrow the stony corals and cause them to collapse.

Alan Friedlander, a federal fisheries ecologist, said that Hawaii still had relatively healthy reefs. "So everything hasn't collapsed yet," he said. "But we need to protect healthy reefs, because it's so much easier and safer to conserve now than it is to try to rebuild later."

The results of the study were released at the International Coral Reef Symposium in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Nearly 3,000 scientists, managers and conservationists have congregated there to pore over the latest science and wrestle with ways to protect the world's coral reefs, which are in a state of steep decline.

Many prominent scientists think that overfishing represents one of the greatest challenges to maintaining and restoring healthy coral reefs.

Daniel Pauly, director of the University of British Columbia's Fisheries Centre, pointed out Tuesday that international authorities and local governments on Pacific island nations had little understanding of how many fish were being removed from coral reefs by small-scale subsistence fishermen.

For the most part, catch data compiled by American Samoa and other such island nations do not include all the small-boat fishermen who paddle or motor out to catch fish for themselves and their families. Comparing census data of per-person fish consumption and other sources, Pauly and his team of researchers discovered that in some cases the unreported catches were 17 times higher than reported catches. On average, they were at least twice as high.