A United Nations report has found that billions of dollars are being wiped off fisheries returns due to depleted fish stocks and poor management.

The World Bank and the Food and Agriculture Organization report, entitled The Sunken Billions: Economic Justification for Fisheries Reform, calculates the losses at US$50 billion per year.

It argues that reforming the way fisheries are managed could restore stocks and build profits.

FAO spokesperson Rolf Willman says "no take zones" have been shown to improve fish stocks, which in turn allows the same catch at a lower cost.

He adds that where fishing is poorly regulated, there is much greater harvesting capacity than needed so the world's fleets could catch the same amount of fish with half the capacity.

At the moment fleets are spending ever more effort, but catches are not rising. They have been roughly stable at about 80 million tonnes annually for a decade.

© NewsRoom 2008