I never eat fish.
Besides the fact that sometimes the texture is weird, I do like fish. Yet, I never eat fish. Everytime I go to my grandparents house they bombard me with questions. It is not that I do not like your cooking grandma, I wish I could have it everyday of the week. However, I decided to write out my argument and maybe print some copies incase someone still tries to get me to eat fish against my will.
“Ocean’s Fish Could Dissapear by 2050” claimed Discovery News, in 2010. Now it is 2015 and the science-fiction picture of the environment is coming into reality. This is not by some climate cycles or aliens or any other excuse has been fed to you by the media. It is because of people. In order to understand this decline, you must understand the phrase Tragedy of the Commons.
This is the same way that fishermen are thinking. And NO we are not blaming it on all fishermen. If anything, they are the ones who want the population to be stable. Their livelihood is based off of the well-being of our oceans. There are plenty of fishermen on the seas that follow every guideline they are given and are very conscious of these issues.
A main contributor, as obvious as this sounds, is overfishing. Overfishing is defined as catching an amount of fish, that the remaining population will not be able to replace when the next catch comes about. Going back to the cookies. Your mom came home with an entire box of cookies (WOO). Therefore you eat as many as your stomach can fill. So out of this box of 24 cookies, you now have 6 left (impressive). You have only 6 cookies left to last you the week until Mom is not going shopping for cookies again. Who says mom will buy the cookies? You go so excited about the cookies and kept the tragedy of the commons aspect into your head so now the cookie supply at your household is limited. It is really a tragedy. The same goes for fish. A fishermen can fish, as long as there are enough left to replace the ones that have already been captured. The ultimate goal is to reach stability.
Now we take the Tragedy of the Commons and Overfishing and combine it with unsustainable fishing practices. Now why would some people not take the sustainable route? Don’t they want to protect the seas as well? It is very costly and time consuming to update equipment to standard. By not following these rules, many animals are captured in the process. Creatures who are captured but are not the intended target are referred to as bycatch. Bycatch can include other endangered species such as Sea Turtles. In order to solve that problem specifically, fishermen are asked to use TEDs (Turtle Exclusion Devices). Turtles are not the only ones who are impacted. There is another fishing technique called trawling, in which a boat drags a long net along the seafloor, essentially scraping up the surface. Now why is it so important if they just scrape the surface? It is important because nature is interdependent. If the trawling boat messes up a coral reef then those fish now do not have a home, will most likely be eaten, and when those fish are all gone their predators will also go hungry. You may eat these predators!
My suggestion to help the oceans, if you do not want to stop eating fish, is to ask where it came from. I also recommend not eating from fish farms for the purpose of health and other factors. But this is a conversation for another day. If you’re interested in learning more or seeing the article I have posted them below. The national geographic link does into sustainable fishing practices, regulations, etc.
On the other hand if we do not implement sustainable practices, the food chain will almost completely flip upside down. There are theories present that jellyfish (one of the oldest specimens in the ocean) will end up evolving into larger creatures. Essentially, there will be massive-carnivorous jellyfish terrorizing the ocean. Personally, I do not think this sounds like an ideal future.
On that note, save Nemo!
