Hong Kong - Unregulated fishing has decimated fish stocks in marine parks, areas that were meant to act as sanctuaries for marine life, a media report said Friday. "These marine parks are commercially fished. It's the equivalent to going out and shooting wildlife in a country park," said Andy Cornish, conservation director of the World Wildlife Fund.
Cornish, who has studied the coral fish population over the last decade, said that government efforts to protect fishing stocks have failed to protect threatened marine life, the Standard reported.
"We used to have more fish species than the entire Mediterranean, and we still have more coral species than the Caribbean region," he said.
But uncontrolled fishing has meant that most fish left in Hong Kong waters are juveniles struggling to survive, Cornish said.
