First imagine a beautiful blue ocean, clear water, and calm waves splashing, filled with different types of fish. You come back 3 years later and you see an orange ocean, no fish swimming in the water. What happened? Overfishing. Humans are catching too many fish, and this is harmful to the environment and our food supply. Let’s take a look at overfishing and what is happening.
Nets Catching Too Much
The first problem in overfishing is that the nets are catching too many critters and also that some fishers fish for money they don’t understand the long-term effects of what will happen with the ocean. Humans are fishing more and more sea life every year from the ocean. 70 years ago the world caught 14 million fish but now that has soared to 73 million fish every year. Back in the day, a hundred years ago, they used to have fishers on sailboats but now they have engine boats that drag nets four times as deep into the ocean which are called trawlers. These trawlers are scraping over the fishing grounds and ruining the future environment for fish. If we do not find alternative ways to fish that won’t harm the oceans, many fish species will die and our ocean will not be as amazingly diverse and beautiful as it is now and has been for thousands of years.
Why can’t we stop fishing?
It seems like a simple solution to just stop fishing altogether. However, that might only save the creatures in the short term, we can’t guess what will happen when we suddenly take away a major predator. For example, if humans stopped fishing salmon, I believe this could cause a huge change in the current food chain that may or may not be environmentally friendly.
For hundreds of years fish have been a part of the human diet, it is a very healthy source of protein. This will also affect not just the fishers, but also the people who processed fish, the people who market fish, and the people who transport fish. We can’t just take all their jobs away. But there are many reasons why people fish. People fish as a job, for fun and for a lifetime, it would not be nice to just take all those jobs and fun times away.
“A world without fishing would be sad.”- Mark Kurlansky Author of World Without Fishing had written, and I agree because people love to fish it is a sport and a job.
What Should We Do About It?
The answer to overfishing is not to stop fishing but to find ways where we can continue to fish and still maintain large fish populations. This way many sea life are allowed to grow to full size. If we can find a way to do this, fishing can continue forever. The highly valued bluefin tuna has almost been fished to extinction. We don’t want this to happen with any other animals.
The Food Chain
When humans are looking to catch fish, sometimes it is not only fish that the nets catch. Thousands of other sea life die every year because they don’t see the nets until it is too late. So once we eat all the fish what will happen to the rest of the ocean? It won’t be just fish that die out other animals too.
We need to stop overfishing. Imagine in 20 years an orange ocean.No sea turtles, fish, dolphins. Just an orange sea in front of you. Wouldn’t you wish you did something to stop this all? We started this and we need to fix it. Without the beautiful blue ocean there is no more swimming, no more fish, no more sea reefs, and slowly all the animals will die out.
Sources:
Ocean Watch by Martyn Bramwell
World Without Fish by Mark Kurlansky