Fishing through Marine Food Webs (2006)
A recurring pattern of declining mean trophic level of fisheries landings, termed "fishing down the food web," is thought to be indicative of the serial replacement of high-trophic-level fisheries with less valuable, low-trophic-level fisheries as the former be- come depleted to economic extinction. An alternative to this view, that declining mean trophic levels indicate the serial addition of low-trophic-level fisheries ("fishing through the food web"), may be equally severe because it ultimately leads to conflicting de- mands for ecosystem services. By analyzing trends in fishery landings in 48 large marine ecosystems worldwide, we find that fishing down the food web was pervasive (present in 30 ecosys- tems) but that the sequential addition mechanism was by far the most common one underlying declines in the mean trophic level of landings.
Fishing through Marine Food Webs (2006) .pdf
