Little room left for fisheries

Little room left for fisheries

Enjoy that fish dinner while you can. According to the article (which you can read by clicking on the link above this line):

"“The era of great expansion has come to an end, and maintaining the current supply of wild fish sustainably is not possible,” says co-author and National Geographic Ocean Fellow Enric Sala. “

If it is not possible to maintain the current supply of wild fish, that means that we should expect fewer fish in our supermarkets and grocery stores in the future. As you know fish supply humans with some very important nutrients and chemicals, what if we are not able to find these nutrients and chemicals in other foods?

This statement by Enric Sala, indicates that hard questions have to be asked about the behavior of our species relating to the Oceans on our planet. We are overfishing the oceans to their detriment,and this pattern cannot continue.

Fisheries better begin immediately to change their behavior:

How? By adopting rules such as these:

• Safe catch limits
  A constantly reassessed, scientifically determined, limit on the total number of fish caught and landed by a fishery. Politics and short time economical incentives should have no role in this.
  
  
• Controls on bycatch
  The use of techniques or management rules to prevent the unintentional killing and disposal of fish, crustaceans and other oceanic life not part of the target catch or landed.
  
  
• Protection of pristine and important habitats
  The key parts in ecosystems need full protection from destructive fisheries; e.g. the spawning and nursing grounds of fish, delicate sea floor, unique unexplored habitats, and corals.
  
  
• Monitoring and Enforcement
  A monitoring system to make sure fishermen do not land more than they are allowed to, do not fish in closed areas and cheat as less as possible. Strong monetary enforcement is needed to make it uneconomic to cheat.

Please read what you can do to help this situation by clicking on the following link:


source:http://overfishing.org/pages/what_can_I_do_to_help.php

We human beings were warned back in 2002 that overfishing had to stop and yet we did not listen:


“Overfishing cannot continue,” warned Nitin Desai, Secretary General of the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development, which took place in Johannesburg. “The depletion of fisheries poses a major threat to the food supply of millions of people." (source:http://www.un.org/events/tenstories/06/story.asp?storyID=800 )


If you live in a country where you know overfishing is occurring, then it is up to you to get this situation reversed by becoming active and by demanding the behavior of the fishing industry be changed.

The fact is "the global fishing fleet is currently 2.5x larger than what the oceans can sustainably support - meaning that humans are taking far more fish out of the ocean than can be replaced by those remaining. As a result:

• 52% of the world’s fisheries are fully exploited, and 24% are overexploited, depleted, or recovering from depletion²
• Seven of the top ten marine fisheries, accounting for about 30% of all capture fisheries production, are fully exploited or overexploited
• As many as 90% of all the ocean’s large fish have been fished out³
• Several important commercial fish populations have declined to the point where their survival is threatened
• Unless the current situation improves, stocks of all species currently fished for food are predicted to collapse by 2048."

Source: http://wwf.panda.org/about_our_earth/blue_planet/problems/problems_fishing/


What are the solutions to this problem?

Some solutions which have been proposed by experts include:

"When thinking about possible solutions to the overfishing problem, it may initially seem that the problem is simply that we are pulling too many fish out of the sea. That's certainly a big part of it, but there are a number of other factors to consider as well:

• the unintentional removal of non-targeted species during fishing operations (bycatch),
• destruction of coastal and ocean-floor breeding habitats,
• pollution, and
• climate change (global warming)."

"As consumers, one thing we can start doing immediately is choosing fish for our dinner plates that are not in danger of being overfished."

source:http://www.grinningplanet.com/2005/06-07/overfishing-article.htm

The Environmental Defense Fund has created a list of the "Best" and "Worst" choices for consumers, (relating to Seafood). Please click on the following link to see this list:

http://www.edf.org/page.cfm?tagID=1521

If you live in Canada please click on the following link to learn which fish are sustainable in our country and should be selected by you to eat before other fish:
(note you need a program which can read PDF files on your computer to access the following link. Such a program is

http://www.seachoice.org/files/pdf/SEACHOICE_alertcard09.pdf

We all have to change our behavior to allow the fish species which have been overfished to recover. Please act now before the situation becomes even worse! The following website shows what steps the Federal Government of Canada has taken in regards to the overfishing what has taken place in our waters:

http://www.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/international/isu-act-eng.htm 



If you live in the United States please visit the following website to learn which fish you should be choosing to eat:

http://www.montereybayaquarium.org/cr/cr_seafoodwatch/download.aspx

Please visit the following website to see  some important statistics about overfishing and the state of the World's fisheries:

 http://www.grid.unep.ch/product/poster/images/Ecosystem_Management-Fisheriesb.pdf