International cooperation must be increased in the fight against overfishing, the European Commission said Friday after a report warned fish stocks could disappear in the coming decades.

"The study speaks of a certain number of direct and indirect causes and overfishing is one of them," said Mireille Thom, spokeswoman for European Fisheries Commissioner Joe Borg.

The European Union's executive arm made the warning following a report in the US magazine Science that accelerating overfishing and pollution of the oceans could wipe out fish stocks by the middle of the century.

The good news, Thom said, is that biologists believe that "if we act on overfishing, the ecosystems could come back to life".

"The measures are already in place but international cooperation must be strengthened to put an end to illegal fishing, which is an international problem," said Thom.

Illegal fishing happens for the most part out in the open sea where effective surveillance is impossible.

Because of persistent overfishing, fish stocks have fallen in EU waters for the past three decades, plunging the sector into crisis.

The European Commission in September proposed tightening protection for endangered deep-sea fish stocks in EU waters.