REPORT / INTERNATIONAL NEWS

Just a few hundred years ago, the world's rivers and lakes were full of fish. In fact freshwater fish were so plentiful that they were used to feed farm animals regularly.But the new study suggests that freshwater species have declined despite efforts at marine conservation.

Along with colleague Paul Humphries in Australia, Winemiller looked back through newspaper articles, diaries and other historical records dating back to the arrival of European settlers in the mid-1800s in Australia and the early-1600s in North America.The researchers didn't crunch numbers or analyze data. Rather, they aimed to get a general picture of what lakes and rivers around the world used to look like.

In Australia, likewise, explorers caught 200-pound cod and other huge fish on demand, even in the Murray-Darling Basin, where heavy agriculture has now decimated many species and big fish are now non-existent.