Fishing Throws Targeted Species Off Balance, Study Shows

[Achilles Tang]

Fishing activities can provoke volatile fluctuations in the populations they target, but it's not often clear why. Fishing can alter the "age pyramid" by lopping off the few large, older fish that make up the top of the pyramid, leaving a broad base of faster-growing small younglings. Biologists found that this rapidly growing and transitory base is dynamically unstable -- a finding having profound implications for the ecosystem and the fishing industries built upon it.

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