GEO Essay Overfishing - Grade: A+ PDF

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Cara O’Reilly Oceanography and Environment Professor Leventer November 10th, 2020 Overfishing and Fisheries Overfishing is a costly environmental consequence of industrialization. Technological innovation has given us the ability to mass-produce natural resources and find new methods of accessing large groups of species. Seafood has become increasingly popular in many countries, and the high demand for certain fish has led to an equal response from producers. Fishing vessels are getting bigger and the equipment used to find fish is becoming more advanced. While fisheries are a major part of many coastal economies, creating jobs and bringing in a majority of the money, they are also the cause of huge oceanic environmental disasters that are unraveling at a rapid rate. It seems we haven’t found a sustainable middle ground between maximizing economic profit and job stability and taking care of our ocean’s ecosystems and the species that inhabit them.

When looking at the data, in some cases, the amount of fish being caught has not decreased. To say that overfishing is not occurring in these scenarios would be to not look at the entire picture. Although it seems there are sustainable numbers of fish populations, the effort in catching them has significantly increased. It has become harder to find fish because populations are dwindling. With unrestricted technological advancements, ships can target schools of fish in deeper waters making it even harder for these populations to procreate faster than the rate they are being caught. Even with highly efficient technology used to locate these species, there is little caution when it comes to capturing non-targeted fish, also sometimes known as bycatch. This “collateral damage” only exacerbates the problem. According to the presentation on marine fisheries done by Pauly in 2018, over 50% of the world fish stocks are fully exploited as large predatory fish have declined globally by 90%. Continually targeting fish for mass production has led to a chain reaction of negative impacts on our oceans. “When too many fish are taken out of the ocean it creates an

imbalance that can erode the food web and lead to a loss of other important marine life, including vulnerable species like sea turtles and corals” (Overfishing , World WildLife, 2020). Wasteful practices that wipe out entire ecosystems just for one catch is “robbing coastal communities of storm protection and natural water filtration and depriving fish of key nursery habitats” (Johnson Ted Talk, August 2017). Even with these major impacts threatening our oceans, the fishing industry has shown no signs of slowing down. “A recent study found 97% of the UK marine protected areas are being bottom trawled, despite most being set up to prevent damage to the seabed from fishing” (Greenpeace Boulder Protection , DailyMail, 2020). If we can’t get their attention by showing them the environmental consequences of their actions, we should look to their inevitable future in what is a dying trade. Globally, the fishing industry brings in over $360 billion to our economy and provides millions of people with jobs. Entire communities are shaped around this one industry and this excessive dependency will be their inevitable downfall. Overfishing will only continue if we don’t work to find ways to counteract this growing problem.

Traditional fisheries management has been unsuccessful in combating this issue. Utilizing new approaches to the fishing industry is our only hope in salvaging the economic stability it provides to millions of people. Organizations including the World Wildlife Fund and Greenpeace have proactively found solutions to restrict illegal fishing practices on local and commercial levels. With government safeguards failing to stop destructive bottom trawling in marine protected areas, Greenpeace has completed a boulder barrier system in hopes of combating overfishing and its environmentally damaging impacts. WWF has focused their energy on tracing fish trade and import controls as illegal fishing are estimated to take up to 30% of high-value species and netting up to $36.4 billion each year. These actions target problems that can be controlled by better government regulation and community effort. We have put ourselves in a situation where shutting down the fishing industry is not a viable option as it has become an integral part of our economy and livelihood. However, if we don’t work hard to reduce the environmental impacts of these destructive practices, we won’t have an industry left to salvage....