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HKU marine biologist collaborative study revealed overfishing and illegal trade of live reef fish
Figures from the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation showed Hong Kong had the second-largest per capita consumption of seafood in Asia at 60kg, three times the world average. The report, Going, Going Gone: The Trade in Live Reef Food Fish, jointly published by the HKU Swire Institute of Marine Sciences, ADM Capital Foundation and the WWF Coral Triangle Program revealed that between 20,000 and 30,000 metric tonnes of live reef fish were traded legally in Hong Kong each year, with a value more than US$1 billion. The volume of imports could be underestimated by 50% in account of illegal trade from inadequacies in the monitoring protocols and the culture of deliberate misreporting in the industry. The report’s lead author Professor Yvonne Sadovy, of the School of Biological Sciences, said it is critical for Hong Kong to take steps to regulate before it is too late, or popular wild-caught reef fish could be gone in the next couple of decades. The team urged the government to update laws on the importation of live fish and the seafood trade, and called on consumers to choose sustainable seafood.
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HKU biologist collaborative research offers solution to low oxygen in ocean
An international team of scientists from the Global Ocean Oxygen Network, an expert group of the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission, released findings of a research paper published in Science which investigated the causes, consequences and solutions to low oxygen worldwide, in both the open ocean and coastal waters. It was revealed that the amount of water in the open ocean with zero oxygen has gone up more than fourfold in the past 50 years. The scientists said to halt the decline, the world needs to rein in both climate change and nutrient pollution. HKU marine biologist Dr Moriaki Yasuhara, a co-author of the paper, said the Asian coast including Hong Kong is one of the most seriously suffered. The scientists urged the world to take on the issue to address the causes: nutrient pollution and climate change, protect vulnerable marine life, and improve low-oxygen tracking worldwide.
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