For everyone’s good, we need to leave the oceans well alone for a while.

That’s the recommendation of over 100 scientific papers assessed by the Professor of Marine Conservation at the University of York, England. All these papers suggest that the demonstrably successful marine protected area (MPA) scheme should be dramatically expanded until it covers at least 20% of the world’s oceans – and maybe even up to one-third of them.

Why? Because many fish stocks are in deep crisis – not just depleted but at such dangerously low levels that their ability to reproduce is threatened, making their recovery more a question of If rather than When.

In the waters around Europe, conditions are dire – some 88% of all European fishing stocks are being overfished, and the European Union can shoulder a lot of the blame with its largely ineffective Common Fisheries Policy, doing little in practice to limit the efficiency of oversized fishing boat fleets and supporting muddleheaded subsidizing designed to help hard-hit fishermen make profits by chasing after what little is left under the waves.

The answer seems to be to ban fishing outright in the hardest-hit areas. This worked stunningly well around the UK’s Lundy Island – but that was small-scale. A worldwide, large-scale fishing ban is likely to light the touchpaper for the marine food industry and prove immensely unpopular for everyone whose traditional livelihood has just been outlawed to them. If managed badly, it’s going to ruin lives.

But what other answer is there? Either fish populations are allowed to recover – or they’re hunted until they never will again.

Image: treehouse1977