section_path: Conservation/Overfishing
section_name: Overfishing
paragraph_text: Overfishing
  
  The Food and Agriculture Organization reports that "in 2017, 34 percent of the fish stocks of the world's marine fisheries were classified as overfished". Overfishing is a major threat to edible fish such as cod and tuna. Overfishing eventually causes fish stocks to collapse, because the survivors cannot produce enough young to replace those removed. Such commercial extinction does not mean that the species is extinct, merely that it can no longer sustain a fishery. In the case of the Pacific sardine fishery off the California coast, the catch steadily declined from a 1937 peak of 800,000 tonnes to an economically inviable 24,000 tonnes in 1968. In the case of the Atlantic northwest cod fishery, overfishing reduced the fish population to 1% of its historical level by 1992. Fisheries scientists and the fishing industry have sharply differing views on the resiliency of fisheries to intensive fishing. In many coastal regions the fishing industry is a major employer, so governments are predisposed to support it. On the other hand, scientists and conservationists push for stringent protection, warning that many stocks could be destroyed within fifty years.