5 Stories About Overfishing & What Can Be Done to Stop It

You’ve heard the news stories and the studies–our oceans are being overfished at a rapid pace but what exactly are the facts? 1) We’ve been overfishing the oceans for a very long time; 2) overfishing changes the ecosystem; 3) good fisheries management is key to recovery; 4) Bluefin Tuna are on the verge of extinction; 5) restaurants and companies can lead the way to recovery.

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5 Stories About Overfishing
Treehugger.com
by Matthew McDermott

If you don’t quite have a handle on the scale of overfishing, consider this statement: Scientists say that about one-third of the world’s oceans could benefit from a 20-year ban on fishing so that fish stocks can be replenished. Also consider that currently a mere 0.7% of the world’s oceans are protected. Yeah, it’s a big problem. It’s Blue August here on TreeHugger and Planet Green, so a quick look back at some of the most interesting stories which flesh out those stats seems in order:

1. We’ve Been Overfishing For a Long Time

First up we should set the record straight on thing. Overfishing is not just a modern problem. In fact, humans have been overexploiting the resources in the seas around them for a long time.

Environmental historians from Trinity College Dublin have shown that 1000 years ago in Europe humans had so depleted freshwater fish that they began plying the waves in earnest. 500 years later most of the coastal stocks began declining, so people began deep-sea trawling.

The advent of industrial fishing, combined with increasing demand for fish from ever increasing human populations, may have taken the problem global. But humans have a long history of fishing an area until nothing’s left and then moving on — the trouble is, now, there’s nowhere really to move on to.

Read the full article.