by L.B. Woodgate

Created on: August 13, 2010

By virtue of the Gulf oil tragedy, more people, especially Americans, have become painfully aware of how fragile our marine ecosystems are when threatened by man-made and natural disasters.  The reliance of many on aquatic life systems stretches from the needs of the lowest marine life in the food chain to the human consumer at the top.  Removing a single link from this food chain can mean extinction or displacement for that specie.  For example, first stage blue crab larvae, called zoeae, “live a planktonic existence in the high-salinity surface waters near their spawning grounds” (Pyle and Cronin 1950; Darnell 1959 and Tagatz (1968).  They feed solely off of the small plankton micro-organisms that are abundant in the sea.  But migration for blue crab at this stage is very limited so if the source of plankton in their spawning area is killed by toxic man-made elements, the blue crabs survival in those areas would be at high risk.

Yet sustainability for marine life and the commercial enterprises that depend on their existence as well as the nutritional needs of large populations is affected by things other than toxic elements we emit into their habitats.  The vast industry of commercial fishing is in danger of losing their livelihoods in large part through their own actions.  A recent State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture (SOFIA) report revealed that global “fishing fleets are at least two to three times as large as needed to take present day catches of fish and other marine species” and that “almost 80% of the world's fisheries are fully- to over-exploited, depleted, or in a state of collapse.” (Overfishing.org –A global Disaster)

Overfishing is defined as “fishing with a sufficiently high intensity to reduce the breeding stock levels to such an extent that they will no longer support a sufficient quantity of fish for sport or commercial harvest.”  In order for any commercial enterprise to be sustainable, the supply of what they produce must be processed in a fashion that doesn’t significantly or unalterably reduce that supply.  The marine life that supports the fishing industry is capable of reproducing itself but can only keep providing a source of income for the fishing industry and meet the demands of fish lover palates provided that safe biological limits are set and maintained by the industry as well as being monitored by authoritative bodies to

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