In India, too, restrictions due to COVID-19 have added more no-fishing days to the country’s calendar. Every year, the country executes a two-month annual fishing ban that starts in April on the east coast and June on the west coast. But this year, a 21-day nationwide total lockdown, announced on March 24, led to an extension of the ban that fishers weren’t ready for. On the east coast, they’ve lost about 20 days of active fishing that otherwise would be there, because of the pandemic, said Yugraj Yadava, director of the Bay of Bengal Programme Inter-Governmental Organisation in Chennai, India. So, fish catch will definitely be down. Similarly, in European countries like Italy, Spain and France, the pandemic led to weekly fishing activity within the countries’ EEZs dropping by up to 50% between March and April relative to the previous two-year average, according to GFW. How marine life will respond to this sudden removal of fishing pressure, though, depends on several factors, experts say. These include the species’ life history traits, whether the species breed during these months, and how heavily they are usually fished. For example, studies on the impacts of marine reserves, where fishing is banned, show that slow-growing, long-lived species like cod take a long time to recover. Fast-growing, short-lived species like scallops respond more quickly. Similarly, overexploited species could rebound when fishing, the main cause of their decline, is removed. If your harvest each year is small, and you fish a little bit less, it’s not going to make much difference, Hilborn said. But in places like China, India or Southeast Asia, where a net is passing over every square meter of ground several times a year, there could be much more of a result. – The COVID-19 pandemic has created an exceptional crisis for fishing communities and the fishing industry as a whole. – Since March 11, when the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic, global fishing activity has been down by nearly 10% compared to the 2018-2019 average, according to a new estimate, and in some places the decline has been much greater. – But it’s difficult to tell whether the global fishing slowdown will give marine life a chance to recover, experts say. – Factors include the duration and timing of the slowdown, as well as whether illegal fishing may rebound in the absence of enforcement…