Human Demand is Killing our Ocean
No water, no life, no blue, no green.
The ocean and fishes are the essence of human life, more than 3 billion people rely on wild caught and farmed sea food but how is this dependence affecting the ocean’s ecosystem? and is this large demand causing more harm than good?
Overfishing menaces the world’s ocean.
Since the 1800, the world witnessed the first overfishing incident when humans were seeking blubber for lamp oil and obliterated the whales around Stellwagen Bank in the United States. The problem accelerated in the 1930s, when subsidies and loans were granted for fishing and thus the appearance of big industrial fishing operations. In 1989, the industry has reached its peak by taking 90 million tons of fish from the ocean and after that yields began to stagnate or decline. We encountered a 30% decrease from 1989 and 1990.
Overfishing is causing fishes to go extinct where 1,616 fishes are on the verge of being extinct, 989 are endangered and 627 are critically endangered. Overfishing has caused a huge collapse of large fish population. The fishing industry began “fishing down” which created a bycatch problem, since when you throw a net, everything gets pulled including diverse not intended species such as sharks, turtles, dolphins…
Overfishing can be controlled through limiting the number of catches and increasing aquaculture and farming of seafood, where most of the world’s growth in aquaculture production has come from East Asia and the Pacific. In addition, fisheries management is implemented to make and impose the rules in order to prevent overfishing.
Overfishing is a major problem! And it is not going away by itself. As former president Bill Clinton said “we know that when we protect our oceans, we are protecting our futures”. Therefore, we recommend declaring certain areas banned for non-sustainable fishing and to bring more awareness to consumers over the type of fish they are buying if it’s from a sustainable source or a non- sustainable one.
However, will this be enough? is aquaculture a solution to our problem? or the beginning of a new one?