by Erik Markusson

Created on: August 26, 2007   Last Updated: August 28, 2007

Over fishing is becoming a bigger and bigger problem as the worldwide demand for fish goes up. Thus fishing is growing and intensifying to feed the 1 out of 6 people on the planet that consume fish as their primary source of protein. Fish harvests have increased by 500 per cent between 1950 and 1997. In 1950 the Japanese fleet caught less than 500,000 tons of tuna whereas today they catch 3.7 million tons. In spite of improved technologies for catching fish and intensified efforts by fishermen fish harvests have declined by 3 per cent a year since 2000. Not only are harvests decreasing but the sizes of the fish caught are decreasing too. For example, blue marlins are one-fifth the size they used to be. This is a sure sign that the world's fishing practices have driven the wild fish population into crisis. As the global population increases, demand will as well. However, the smaller and smaller fishing stocks won't be able to support this increased demand. The oceans are reaching the breaking point. Therefore, we should take steps to reverse these trends immediately before the wild fish population is decimated to a point where they'll never recover or disappear altogether.

Overfishing has also become a huge problem due to the size of the world's commercial fishing fleets. At any one time there are 4 million vessels plying the oceans. Another contributing factor is the modern technologies used for harvesting fish. The technology which wreaks the most havoc is the long line, a 60 mile long monofilament line with vertical lines that have up to 10 thousand hooks. With the long line there are many unintended victims, the infamous bycatch. The bycatch includes other species of fish, 40 thousand sea turtles, and 300 thousand seabirds. These victims account for 25 percent of the global harvest. Trawl nets and drift nets also cause their share of damage. The practice of catching the largest fish in favor of the smaller ones is also harmful to the ecosystem because the large fish are the ones that reproduce. Without the large fish the populations of wild fish can't replenish themselves. Underlying the problem is consumer demand which drives the fleets to try and increase the supply of fish.
I have a comprehensive idea of how we might remedy the problem of over fishing. It's very important to employ all the ideas together because they're inter-related. This would have the best chance of success. Due to this relationship implementing some of these measures on an individual

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