Warnings that fish stocks may collapse by 2048 were condemned today as an unrealistic "doomsday prediction" by the UK seafood industry and the Scottish Fishermen's Federation (SFF).
A study published in the journal Sciencetoday warned that if seafood species continue to decline at the present rate through over-fishing and pollution, there will be little left in within 40 years time.
However the SFF has claimed the study does not deal with reality or note continuing attempts to protect fish stocks.
Scottish Fishermen's Federation chief executive Bertie Armstrong
Branding the report as "superficial", SFF chief executive Bertie Armstrong said: "It takes a ridiculously long timescale and does not mention the efforts being made in Europe to recover stocks as quickly as we can.
"It is a doomsday prediction that ignores the reality of what the world is actually trying to do to remove the ills that it describes."
Seafish, the UK seafood industry, is now commissioning its own scientists to review the reports finding.
The UK's Fisheries minister Ben Bradshaw said the warning represents the world's biggest environmental challenge after global warming.
He ruled out a complete ban on cod fishing, saying a "zero catch" would see "the end of all fishing in the UK".
Mr Bradshaw told the BBCthe Government had already clamped down on illegal fishing and set fishing quotas "in line with the health of stocks".
Study leader Dr Boris Worm, from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada, said: "Species have been disappearing from ocean ecosystems and this trend has recently been accelerating.
"Now we begin to see some of the consequences. For example, if the long-term trend continues, all fish and seafood species are projected to collapse within my lifetime - by 2048."
Almost 30 per cent of fished species populations had already reached this tipping point in 2003, according to the study. Pollution, habitat destruction and climate change all took their toll on fish species.