Number of fish species at risk of extinction is five times higher than past estimates

Have you ever stopped to consider the impact of species extinction on fish? According to the work of researchers in France, it’s high time we took a deeper dive.

Researchers have recently trained their sights on marine fish species, analyzing the level of threat they face. 

Shockingly, they have uncovered that 12.7% of these species teeter on the brink of extinction. This figure shows a five-fold increase from the previous estimates of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Previously, their estimate stood at a modest 2.5%.

Saving fish from extinction

This eye-opening research was led by Nicolas Loiseau and Nicolas Mouquet of the MARBEC Unit – a.k.a the Marine Biodiversity, Exploitation, and Conservation Unit located in Montpellier, France.

The IUCN’s Red List of Threatened Species is a comprehensive effort aimed at tracking over 150,000 species. Its purpose? To guide conservation efforts worldwide. 

Despite these commendable efforts, there’s still a significant blind spot. It turns out that a whopping 38% of marine species have been overlooked.

That’s almost 5,000 fish species that don’t have an official conservation status due to a lack of data.

Fishing for solutions

Loiseau, Mouquet, and their team devised a strategy to address this alarming data deficiency. By wielding a machine learning model with an artificial neural network, they predicted the extinction risks faced by the overlooked fish species. 

The models worked their magic on data regarding occurrence, biological traits, taxonomy, and human uses gathered from 13,195 fish species.

The results? 78.5% of the previously neglected 4,992 species were classified as either Non-Threatened or Threatened.

There was a five-fold increase in predicted Threatened species, and the number of predicted Non-Threatened species swelled by a third.

Circumstances leading to fish extinction

The Threatened category included species listed as Critically Endangered, Endangered, and Vulnerable. 

The predicted Threatened species tended to share particular characteristics: a limited geographic range, substantial body size, and a slow growth rate. The study also found a strong correlation between extinction risk and shallow habitats.

Researchers identified key geographical hotspots that are home to most of the predicted threatened species, highlighting areas that require urgent conservation efforts to protect biodiversity and prevent further species decline.

Areas such as the South China Sea, the Philippine and Celebes Seas, and the west coasts of Australia and North America were highlighted. This shift in focus to these regions means a shift in conservation priority.

Applying AI to conservation

Keep in mind that these new estimates are the product of AI analysis and don’t replace direct evaluations of at-risk species.

However, AI provides a fast, broad-ranging and cost-effective way of assessing extinction risk that we didn’t have access to previously.

“Artificial Intelligence (AI) enables the reliable assessment of extinction risks for species that have not yet been evaluated by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN),” Loiseau explains. 

“Our analysis of 13,195 marine fish species reveals that the extinction risk is significantly higher than the IUCN’s initial estimates, rising from 2.5% to 12.7%. 

“We propose to incorporate recent advancements in forecasting species extinction risks into a new synthetic index called ‘predicted IUCN status.’ This index can serve as a valuable complement to the current ‘measured IUCN status.’”

In essence, this unique blend of AI and traditional research methods gives us valuable insights into our marine life’s survival rate and chances of fish extinction. You might say we’ve just scratched the surface. There’s an ocean of data out there, and our understanding continues to evolve.

What’s next?

With this breakthrough in data, the horizon of our understanding has expanded, bringing into focus areas that need more research and conservation efforts. 

After all, as the old saying goes – there are plenty more fish in the sea. But will there always be? This is something that Loiseau, Mouquet, and their team are working tirelessly to ensure.

As we plunge into the future, we must remember that understanding our natural world and its inhabitants is a crucial step towards preserving it. Will we rise to the challenge? Only time will tell.

The study is published in the journal PLoS Biology.

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