Overfishing Issue

In the last 100 years, humans have damaged the environment more than in the last 1,000 years, and it’s no secret how. Humans pollute the air, throw trash in the oceans, kill off endangered species, the list could go on. One big environmental problem that gets swept under the rug, though, is overfishing. Overfishing is when fishing institutions fish more than the population of fish can replete itself. It can affect the environment from simply a lone fisherman to a global scale of massive big fishing companies quickly destroying our ecosystems with their fleets of fishing boats. Currently, it is causing the decline of populations of many fish, which triggers a chain reaction that greatly affects the aquatic environment. This is a problem because fishing institutions are greatly damaging the environment to the point where the effects are irreversible. In order to solve the overfishing problem, we need to permanently stop fishing altogether, or else the planet’s entire ecosystem would be unbalanced and would set off irreversible chain reactions that would have negative effects on the environment.

Fish populations are declining at a rapid rate all around the world. For example, the population of walleye in the Glen Elder Reservoir are depleting rapidly because of overfishing. The problem is, the walleye are being fished in large amounts, and before the fish are at the maturity to mate (Quist). That means the fish have nearly no chance at replenishing the population year after year. It might seem like a small, insignificant case of overfishing in the grand scheme of things, but there are thousands of cases like this all over the world, causing all sorts of chain reactions, damaging the environment.

Overfishing is affecting the environment in a way where fish that aren’t meant to be fished are being killed at large and concerning rates. For example, in the Mediterranean Sea, the population of shark has showed rates of decline from >96 to >99.99% (FERRETTI). Sharks were considered pests by local fishing institutions, and in just the Tuscan Archipelago, there were 51 shark gill nets, 48 fish traps, 11 tuna traps, which would not only capture the fish, but also the sharks (FERRETTI). What this shows is that fishing institutions are just mindlessly killing off species that have nothing to do with their commercial fishing, damaging the environment, and not caring enough to do anything about it.

So what’s going on so far is that fishing institutions are not only killing off their own commercial fish, but they’re killing others as well. This is highly problematic. It’s happening all over the world in every major body of water, restrictionless, and not much is being done about it. Every aquatic ecosystem is being degraded, and if humans don’t do something soon, there will be irreversible effects on the environment that we’ll eventually be sorry for. We need to stop overfishing now. The first step to stopping overfishing is to learn what is the cause of overfishing.

One cause of overfishing is the demand for fish. Fish is seen as a staple food for many societies and cultures all over the world. In fact, China, the US, and Japan are the top three fish consumers in the world, consuming a total of 1,624.5 metric tonnes of fish each year (AFP). When you have three countries on the top ten list for countries with the largest populations in the world on the list of top fish consumers in the world, it’s expected that the demand for fish is really high. It’s only going to get higher after this, because the human population is increasing an exponential rate. As the demand for fish increases, the supply of fish actually decreases because fishing institutions are draining the environment of the fish populations because of the high demand.

Another reason why fishing institutions overfish so much is because of rapid modernization. Modernization is “achieved through exploitation of natural resources and its relation with the condition of natural resources is consistently negative” (BREWER). The problem is, all these fishing institutions are modernizing, but they’re not taking any sort of caution towards it. Many fishing institutions aren’t minding what affect they have on the environment for the sake of profits and fear of going out of business. These fishing institutions need to think about the long term effects of overfishing, and that if they continue, there will be no more fish to fish and that is when their fishing companies will go definitely go out of business.

Simply put, overfishing is very damaging to the environment, and if we continue, pretty soon we’ll have no more fish to eat. This would be very problematic because just as stated earlier, fish is part of many, many people’s diet all over the world. It would be like Americans adjusting to not eating chicken for the rest of their lives. There would be public outrage and panic all over the globe.

There are few things that have been done to restrict overfishing, such as the Sustainable Fisheries Act of 1996. This act was made to regulate, restrict the fishing rules and limits of fishing institutions, and help recover fish populations in the United States (1996 Public Law 104–297...). Though made twenty years ago, the act has not done much change on overfishing since the act was created. It is also reported that fisheries would sue and block recovery plans because it meant less fishing for their institutions (Safina). And, as we all know, less fishing=less profits for fishing companies. This shows us that fishing companies don’t care about the long term effects of overfishing, even though those effects will affect them in the years to come, which is pushing hundreds of fishing companies out of business due to poor fishing regulations.

So, if people really want to do something about overfishing, what can we do? Well, there has been many ideas that have been circling around, such as genetically altering fish so that they reproduce at an earlier age. This would be a good thing because that would mean fishing institutions around the world could keep fishing at the same overfishing rate that they already have been, and the fish population would replenish itself faster. And, when fish population is maintained, the ecosystem is maintained, and people still eat their fish and everyone is happy. The downside to this idea, though, is that genetically altering the fish might just have the opposite effect, as in instead of doing good for the environment, it would do bad. Genetically altered fish would be less diverse, which means