Overfishing - Lana Kim
Throughout history, societies everywhere have relied on fishing as a way to obtain food. Many people overlook the term of “overfishing” since the oceans make up more than three fourths of Earth’s surface, holding millions of different fish and aquatic creatures. Thus, humans have been increasingly overharvesting fish, causing reductions in the amount of fish and different varieties of fish.
What has caused the overfishing found around the world? First of all, one of the biggest and worst causes of overfishing is illegal fishing. It is believed that roughly 30% of catches come from illegal fishers. Furthermore, illegal fishers are believed to catch 36.4 billion dollars worth of fish. Another reason for overfishing comes from subsidies. Subsidies are a sum of money that is provided by the government to assist companies and businesses to keep their services competitive. Government subsidies artificially increase fishing efforts and make fishing more profitable than it would be without subsidies, causing people to fish more as to gain not only food but also money. These are only a couple of the main factors that result in overfishing, can you think of any other possible cause of overfishing found around the world?
Centuries of overfishing has led to the decline of oceanic biodiversity and has affected the stability of different aquatic ecosystems. Overharvesting causes changes in the reproduction and maturity rate of different species of fish, causing overall changes in the ecosystem. Furthermore, overfishing has many social and economic impacts. Fish account for one of the most highly traded foods, depended by people across the globe. Not only do people depend upon the fish for food, but many people in developing nations depend on fishing as their main source of income. Thus, if the amount of fish in the oceans were to drastically reduce, many jobs will be lost as well.
What are some possible solutions to overfishing? Some places have established local bye-laws as to limit fishing and the areas where fishers can actually fish. Other solutions include creating more protected areas for fish, conserving endemic species of different ecosystems and cutting the duration of fishing seasons of different places.
Overharvesting of any resource has detrimental effects on ecosystems everywhere. Overfishing has such a deep impact because fish make up the majority of diets and economies everywhere. What would we do if fish were to all of a sudden become extinct? Are there any other possible solutions to reducing and limiting overfishing?
http://www.lenfestocean.org/en/research-projects/fisheries-subsidies-in-the-united-states
https://deepoceanfacts.com/ways-to-prevent-overfishing
19 comments:
This was a highly informative article about overfishing! I think its important for people to understand the consequences of their actions. The high demand for seafood drives the increase in fishing, as fishing companies are motivated by the profit return from fishing. This promotes careless behavior, and leads to detrimental effects on marine ecosystems. By reducing our intake of seafood and regulating the fishing industry, we can limit overfishing. While overfishing seems like a massive problem that can only be solved at the government level, we as consumers can take actions that will promote sustainable behavior.
This is a very interesting topic because I’ve never been interested in fishing or looked into it in any way. I didn’t even know fishing could be illegal so this was a very interesting article.
Overfishing is a major problem that not many people are aware of. I have learned a lot about this problem but have never heard of illegal fishing before. I believe that this problem relates to overpopulation of humans. If there was a way to regulate the human population, we could solve many other problems such as over-harvesting.
I think a stronger enforcement of fishing laws and regulations could go a long way. I feel like a lot of overfishing happens not out of malice, but because people simply aren’t aware that regulations are even in place. It may also help if everyone were to cut out meat entirely or at least eat it in moderation so there would be less of a demand for fishermen.
Overfishing is an ongoing problem that seems to be taking a bigger toll than people realize. I feel like of people took the problem more seriously and looked to make changes many of the problems could be solved. Fisherman in the future will be out a job if we continue to overfish our oceans, fivers and lakes.
Because of the sheer abundance of marine life, for example the old adage “plenty of fish in the sea” refers to high abundance, many people view the ocean’s resources as inextinguible. However, as you pointed out, there are real concerns surrounding the over-harvest of fish. For me, I think of the issue not only as a detriment to marine life but also a detriment to small, more vulnerable fisherman who have to compete with the likes of industrial sea food producers. This is when overfishing not only becomes an issue for those of us who enjoy sea food now and again, but also for the diets of many low income or tribal peoples around the world. The problem with this over harvest, is that it not only affects those who have the means to survive it, but entire communities surrounding the production of fish. You wrote a fantastic article, thank you.
Interesting article! We have learned about the impacts of overharvesting in class before, but this shows the extended effects that overharvesting fish specifically will cause. If fish were to all of a sudden become extinct, there would be many repercussions. There would be a huge amount of people who would lose jobs, and there would be massive effects on the ocean’s ecosystem. Since our world is continuing to increase in population, it will be hard to make changes in harvesting fish. One way to help reduce overfishing would be to stop illegal fishing. This is a problem that must be addressed.
What a cool topic! Over harvesting of fish is important to talk about since not many people know about it. I think we need to spread the word about the harmful effects it is causing the environment so that we can preserve our oceans and lakes for future generations.
There is a lot of environmental problems in the world, but overfishing is probably the most overlooked issue. Many organisms inside waters of the earth are decreasing due to the increasing fishing going on. Our generation needs to focus on preserving the oceans and lakes so the future populations can enjoy these natural habitats. The problem, though, is that if we decrease fishing, then the market will go down for fish. People have to make sure that everything stays stable.
This was so interesting! I knew next to nothing about overfishing so I found this very informative and interesting. I think it’s pretty clear that this comes down to a tragedy of the commons type issue. After all, most bodies of water, such as the ocean, are shared by many different people of many different nations. Therefore, it would be very difficult to impose any regulations on fishers to restrict the amount of fish they were able to catch. Perhaps it would work with smaller bodies of water such as lakes and rivers but rather than limiting the number of fish a fishermen can catch, it may be wise to regulate how often a fisher may fish in such bodies of water instead because, in doing so, it may allow ecosystems time to replenish their supply of fish to, in a way, ‘un do’ the effect of the fish being caught. Obviously, this proposal has many flaws of it’s own, but it’s an idea.
Your article was so informative ! The most I had previously known about overfishing had been from Finding Nemo ! Honestly, I think that we’ll need more than laws to reduce overfishing. People will likely continue what they want in order to survive so there will need to be incentives to motivate people to not overfish. These incentives may include alternate sources of food and government financial aid.
The textbook talked about how overfishing can be detrimental to non-target species, as well. It sounds really dumb, but I first learned about how harmful illegal fishing is from the TV show H2O when turtles kept getting caught in illegal fishing nets. Even though it's a kids' show about mermaids, it still taught me about the environment. And mermaids.
Overfishing is such a big issue and not many people are aware of the damages. I feel in the past decade or so however, people have started to try and preserve the organisms and the ocean that there is hope for the future. The best way to speed up the process is to educate the younger generations on ways to help the oceans. This way we can ensure overfishing declines at a high rate! Great post!
Overfishing is an issue that I believe is gaining more awareness. We can help not to exacerbate the issue by buying ethically farmed fish and by paying attention to the companies we’re supporting. It’s important that we actively try to resolve this issue or else we will lose biodiversity and a whole industry will suffer from unemployment.
Fishing has been a part of human activity for centuries and it has become a normal part of life for us. What people don’t always realize is that fish populations are declining and we are not fishing in a sustainable manner, which has cause overhunting of fish. This blog points out the government issue with regulating the activity and how we need to change our ways in order to balance out the populations of marine life.
Out of all of the environmentally destructive habits humans have taken part in, I would not expect fishing to be one of them. Surprisingly, however, this blog has proven me wrong as it is clearly inhibiting the sustainability of fish populations in the world’s oceans. I believe that regulations need to be better enforced to limit the negative impacts induced by illegal fishers and the government likely needs to revise its regulations to accommodate for the drastically decreasing fish populations.
This was very informational! If there are strict rules that limit the amount of fish, over harvesting could be decreased. Awareness of overfishing could also decrease over harvesting since a lot of people aren’t aware of this issue.
Wow, this blog is very interesting because I didn’t really know what overfishing was. I never really knew that we are seriously overharvesting our fish which is decreasing its population and variation of fish as well. I also didn’t even know that illegal fishing was a thing because when you included that there is about 30% of catches are illegal fishing which makes up 36.4 billion dollars. I was truly shocked. I also couldn’t believe that the government is assisting subsidies that are another reason why overfishing is increasing. Overfishing I becoming dangerous in oceanic ecosystems, so we must be proactive and put a stop to it.
I found this blog to be very interesting and informative as I found it hard to believe that governments would promote such heinous activities.. To an sewer your question, if fish were to become extinct there is no doubt that biodiversity will go down tremendously and many organisms would lose their main source of food leaving an imbalance in many ecosystems’ food webs.This is why we need to prevent overfishing and instill more constrictions on fishing.
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