Global fisheries scientists request to World Trade Organization (WTO) members to use their mandates to protect the health of the ocean and the well-being of society by managing fishing subsidies, particularly banning those that promote overfishing.
The group of scientists from the 4 continents, with the participation of Prof. Mary Gasalla warns that to halt overfishing, degradation and loss of biodiversity and CO2 emissions, as well as to safeguard food and livelihoods, WTO members must ban financial subsidies to industrial fleets that harm local communities and ecosystems, especially in waters outside their countries. We congratulate all the authors who reached a consensus on the final document, and we look forward to the WTO resolutions that has still no date because of postponents.

Read the full text at: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abm1680

Tracking the publication impacts:

- it has been downloaded more than 14,000 times;
- appeared in over 30 news and 1600 tweets;
- is among the 2% of articles that received the highest altimeter in Science Magazine;
- it has been translated into 14 languages, access the translations here;
- is mentioned in 4 Wikipedia pages; "2021 in science: – A number of significant scientific events have occurred or are scheduled to occur in 2021 - 28 October: An open letter by almost 300 scientists asks the WTO to eliminate increasing harmful fisheries subsidies.[749] [750].” https://en.wikipedia.org/?curid=61744455#cite_note-746.

The letter will be discussed at the next ministerial meeting of the WTO in Geneva.