3:18, Friday, September 9th
There have been coastal fishing restrictions for many years, but there are not many restrictions on fishing on the open ocean. This has pressured many fishing companies to venture into deeper waters for more fish. The harvesting of mass groups of fish, however, has proven to be damaging to the populations of many deep-sea fish. The reason that this harms these fish’s communities is because these fish reproduce extremely slowly. Some deep-sea fish take up to 30 years to reach sexual maturity, which means that the younger ones who are being caught in these fishing nets have not bred yet, and most will never get the opportunity to do so. The call from some scientists is to ban all deep sea fishing, while others believe that there is a way to harvest them more conservatively, so as not to threaten the very survival of the species.
I personally support the idea that we should catch the fish in a more conservative way, but not stop the fishing altogether. I believe that this is an example of companies trying to produce more of their product, while trying to obey the laws of the coastal regions. The obvious solution is to move out to international waters, where there are no restrictions on what you can or can’t catch. However, this behavior is very destructive to large populations of fish at a time, as the nets often are large enough to catch an entire school of fish at a time. Many of the articles I read compared the fisherman’s ocean to a desert, pointing out that there are only pockets (or oasis’) of fish in the vast oceans. I do believe that if we continue the current path, we will soon cause mass extinctions of fish in our oceans, which will mean that they will not be a reliable food source for future generations.
http://www.enn.com/topics/environmental_policy
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