A Canada-U.S. research team has found that commercial fisheries play an unexpected role in the decline of water quality in coastal waters. In a recent issue of Nature Geoscience, Roxane Maranger and Nina Caraco explain that the collapse of the fisheries from decades of over fishing has played a significant role in disturbing the balance between nitrogen entering and leaving coastal water systems. The study, the first to examine the world's 58 coatal regions, shows how failing to maintain ecosystems in a sustainable manner has wide-ranging consequences. Using data provided by the United Nations, Maranger and Caraco found that commercial fishing has played an important, yet declining, role in removing man-made nitrogen from coastal waters. "Fish accumulate nitrogen as biomass, and when humans move fish from the ocean to the table through commercial fisheries, they are returning part of this terrestrial nitrogen generated by humans back to the land," said Maranger, a biology professor at the Université de Montréal (Canada).

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