Ok, who here likes sushi? If you are like me and hundreds of millions, if not billions, of other people around the world, then you do. However, even if the thought of raw fish makes you queasy, you should still read this article if you are fond of tuna sandwiches, lox bagels, or fish sticks.
Alright fellow fish-eaters, brace yourselves for some scary news: Sushi (and canned tuna and fish sticks) could soon go the way of the Dodo bird unless we make major changes to the way we approach fishing. In fact, some scientists say that we may one day be stuck eating jellyfish instead of delicious tuna, mahi mahi, mackerel, or halibut.
So how can we prevent this disaster from happening?
1.Encourage Eco-friendly Fishing Techniques and Outlaw the Most Harmful Practices
In addition to catching large amounts of desireable fish, many common fishing practices used today also permanantly damge fish habitat and kill large numbers of other aquatic organisms. Bottom trawling, dynamite fishing, and fishing with cyanide are just a few of the regularly used fishing practices that cause extensive damage to the environment. Not only do these practices enable the harvest of an unsustainably large number of fish, they also severely damage or destroy fish habitat, thus lowering the number of fish that that area could support in the future.
2.Fishing Quotas
Many of the world’s fisheries are overfished. This means that fish are being harvested at a rate much higher than they can reproduce. When a fishery is overfished for an extended period of time, it can collapse, meaning that commercial harvests are no longer possible. When a fish populations decrease or collapse, fishermen lose their livlihoods. Therefore, it is in the fishermens’ and the public’s interest to protect fish populations and encourage a sustainable harvest. One way to do this is to establish fishing quotas that limit the amount of each fish species that can be harvested from a fishery in a given period of time. This ensures that enough fish of each species are left each year to reproduce and maintain or increase their population from year to year.
3.Increase protected areas
Banning fishing in certain areas of the sea gives fish a safe place to live and reproduce, thus insuring their continued existence even when their populations are collapsing elsewhere.
Many developed countries have designated marine protection areas where fishing is banned or heavily restricted. However, most developing countries lag behind in designating such areas and enforcing fishing bans in them. To make matters worse, most of the world’s ocean area falls outside of national boundaries. Due to existing international law and the massive expanses involved, it is incredibly difficult to protect fisheries or ban fishing anywhere in international waters. Countries should individually create more marine protection areas and should work together to establish meaningful protection areas in international waters that are enforced by the UN or another international body.
4.Combat Climate Change
Perhaps the greatest threat to fish populations globally is climate change. Thousands of species of fish rely on healthy coral reefs for their existence. These same reefs are dying or bleaching due to increased water temperatures and dissolved carbon dioxide concentrations. When a reef dies, so does its ability to support the numerous fish species that depend on it.
Want to know one marine animal whose population is exploding thanks to overfishing and climate change? (Hint: I mentioned it in the title to this article) Yep, you guessed it, jellyfish. While fish populations are shrinking and collapsing around the globe, jellyfish numbers are increasing rapidly and they are expanding further and further from their traditional range; leading some to predict that jellyfish may someday land on a plate near you.
So what can you personally do?
1. Eat the right kinds of fish.
Environmental Defense and other organizations have lists of the best and worst fish to eat. EDF’s lists include information on health benefits and risks of eating each type of fish as well as the impacts eating those fish has on the environment.
2.Contact your elected officials. Tell them to support strong climate legislation and more fisheries protections.
This government website will help you identify and contact your elected officials.
Other Posts by Johnnie Chamberlin
Johnnie Chamberlin currently lives in Fayetteville, AR. He holds a MS in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Duke University and a degree in Cognitive Science from UC Berkeley. Johnnie has years of experience in environmental conservation, outreach, and policy work. He is the author of "Trails of Little Rock: A Guide to Little Rock's Land and Water Trails". In his free time he enjoys hiking, kayaking, backpacking, and reading in his hammock. For more on Chamberlin's work with the Little Rock, Arkansas Fourche Creek Watershed Initiative go to www.fourchecreek.org
You made some good points there. I did a search on the topic and found most people will agree with your blog.
Insightful?:
0 
0