Page - June 17, 2008
Modern fishing methods are stripping the oceans of marine life at an incredible pace. Unregulated industrial fishing destroys whole marine ecosystems and has to stop.
Giant ships
using state-of-the-art sonar can pinpoint schools of fish quickly
and accurately. The ships are floating buildings with fish
processing and packing plants, huge freezing systems, fishmeal
processing plants, and powerful engines to drag enormous fishing
gear through the ocean.
Wherever they operate, the capacity of industrial
fishing fleets exceed the ocean's ecological limits. The trend of
the past century is of fishing down the food chain. As larger fish
species are wiped out, the next smaller fish species are targeted.
Canadian Fisheries expert Dr. Daniel Pauly warns that if this
continues our children will be eating jellyfish.
Ocean life simply cannot
replace itself due to the speed, determination and force with which
it is being plundered. Simply put, more and more people are
competing for less and less fish and exacerbating the existing
oceans crisis.
Scientists agree that the biggest threat to marine
biodiversity is overfishing while fishery research and management
institutions have fallen far behind the rapid advances in fishing
technology.
Unregulated plunder
Regulation of fishing vessels is universally
inadequate. In Canada and worldwide, the fishing industry is often
given access to fish stocks before the impact of their fishing
practices is known.
Moreover, the fishing practices destroy habitat as
well as inhabitants. Bottom trawling, for example, destroys entire
ancient deep sea coral forests.
As impacts are felt throughout marine ecosystems,
scientists are warning that the oceans will suffer profound changes
as a result of overfishing and destructive fishing practices.
Solution: regulation of industrial fishing >>