section_path: Environmental issues/Overfishing
section_name: Overfishing
paragraph_text: Overfishing
  
  Fish stock levels in the Mediterranean Sea are alarmingly low. The European Environment Agency says that more than 65% of all fish stocks in the region are outside safe biological limits and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation, that some of the most important fisheries—such as albacore and bluefin tuna, hake, marlin, swordfish, red mullet and sea bream —are threatened.
  
  There are clear indications that catch size and quality have declined, often dramatically, and in many areas, larger and longer-lived species have disappeared entirely from commercial catches.
  
  Large open-water fish like tuna have been a shared fisheries resource for thousands of years but the stocks are now dangerously low. In 1999, Greenpeace published a report revealing that the amount of bluefin tuna in the Mediterranean had decreased by over 80% in the previous 20 years and government scientists warn that without immediate action the stock will collapse.