Global fish catches are falling three times faster than official UN figures suggest, according to a landmark new study, with overfishing to blame. Seafood is the critical source of protein for more than 2.5 billion people, but over-exploitation is cutting the catch by more than 1m tonnes a year.

The report points to habitat degradation, alteration, and loss as the largest threat to all migratory fish. Increasingly, dams and other river barriers block fish from reaching their mating or feeding grounds, thereby disrupting their life cycles.

For fish alone, the decline was 50 percent. Damage to coral reefs and mangroves, which are nurseries for many fish, add to problems led by over-fishing. Other threats include coastal development, pollution and climate change, which is raising temperatures and making waters more acidic.

Fish populations vary because of density-dependent and -independent processes that determine recruitment, growth, and natural mortality, and in response to fishing.

It can change the size of fish remaining, as well as how they reproduce and the speed at which they mature. When too many fish are taken out of the ocean it creates an imbalance that can erode the food web and lead to a loss of other important marine life, including vulnerable species like sea turtles and corals.

Freshwater fish populations are collapsing. Nearly 1/3 of all freshwater fish are threatened with extinction. In 2020 alone, 16 freshwater fish species were declared extinct. Since 1970, mega-fish—those that weigh over 66lbs—have declined in number by 94% and migratory freshwater fish saw a 76 % decline.

The smooth handfish (Sympterichthys unipennis), an unusual species that could “walk” on its pectoral and pelvic fins, is the first marine bony fish to go extinct in modern times, likely due to habitat loss and destructive fishing practices.

People in some religious traditions, such as Christianity, may derive ideas of right and wrong from the rules and laws set forth in their respective authoritative guides and by their religious leaders. Divine Command Theory equates morality to adherence to authoritative commands in a holy book.

A long-standing tradition in religious ethics called divine command theory holds that God indeed creates moral rules purely as a function of his free will. If God chooses to make a specific standard of morality, it thereby becomes moral simply as a result of him willing it so.