Bluefin Tuna only one of hundreds facing crisis

Over-Fishing Facts

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Bluefin Tuna only one of hundreds facing crisis

With the introduction of the new factory boats, there was a 7% growth in catches every year during the 1950’s and 60’s, but since then there has been little increase in catch size, and at least 20 of the world’s most important fisheries have disappeared in the last 25 years, with many more suffering so badly from overfishing that they are unlikely to recover.

As catches have gradually become smaller, so the mesh sizes used in fishing nets have decreased, allowing smaller and smaller fish to be caught. Many of these are too small to be used as food, so they are crushed to be made into either animal food or fertiliser.

Fishing using nets is indiscriminate. Any fish which get in the way of the net will be caught in it if they are too big to get through the mesh. For every one tonne of prawns caught, three tonnes of other fish are killed and thrown away. 20,000 porpoises die each year in the nets of salmon fishermen in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and tens of thousands of dolphins are killed each year by tuna fishermen.
In the Antarctic, fishing for krill is threatening to disrupt the delicate balance of nature in these waters. Krill are small, red shrimps, about 6cm long, found in huge numbers in areas of plant plankton, and they make up a significant part of the animal plankton. Krill occur in huge swarms many kilometres across, and it has estimated that there could be up to 650 million tonnes of them in the Antarctic Ocean.

Since the early 1980s, six countries, including Japan and the former USSR have been harvesting krill, which is the main food for the great whales, and which also supplements the diets of seals, penguins, squid and fish. We have no idea what effects this will have on the populations of animals which feed on krill. The natural balance in the Antarctic has already been upset by the overexploitation of the great whales, and heavy fishing of krill may well worsen the situation.

What can be done?

Join a free on-line lobby group and get paid. I started savetheWorldfree.ning.com because it is a good idea to put pressure on the governments to save renewable resources. At present pressure from multi-national corporations is a huge problem, not just for fish!!!!.

Properly maintained fisheries could and should be a renewable and possibly even endless supply of protein. At present, short-term economic pressures are preventing sensible long-term planning for a sustainable yield (only taking out as many fish as can be replaced by reproduction the following year.)
Quotas should be set on catches, based on scientific estimates for the size of the fish stock. Correct mesh size should be used in all nets to ensure that fish of the right age are caught, and to prevent as much as possible accidental catches of other fish. International agreements limiting catches are necessary to safeguard fish stocks for the use not only of humans but for marine animals as well. With these measures in place, fishing could continue without damaging stocks, and we could employ the world’s richest source of protein to everyone’s advantage.