Subject: Group F
Message: Examine the sustainability of ocean fishing. (10 marks)
“Men have been hunting fish under the ocean ever since they
discovered they were there”
About 99.4% of the Earth’s oceans are fishable and are used
as fishing grounds. The recent improvements in technology over the past decade
has allowed fishermen to use bigger boats, bigger fish nets (as big as football
fields) and radars that can detect where the large fishing grounds are located.
Thanks to this, the fishing industries profit more because of a bigger catch.
Although the fish stocks are being depleted, the demand for fish doesn’t seem
to reduce with the increasing population and the increasing popularity of
fishery products. By fishing in abundance, we are causing an irreparable damage
to the ecosystem but the “problem is that we’re too good”. There
are certain
measures that can be addressed in terms of finding a solution for sustainable
ocean fishing: we can always close down fishing areas and prohibit fishermen
and fish industries to fish in those areas. However, these still fail to
address the problem of over fishing because it has become a large business and
the fish industry are still catching small fishes in large quantities that have
no chance to reproduce and in turn is causing a decline in fish stocks. Although
many efforts have been made to reduce the size of fish stocks but still it
isn’t enough to repair the damages we had caused to the fish. But is there
really a way that would allow us to maintain our fish yields without causing
any damage to the ecosystem? Scientists believe that if we continue to fish
like this, in fifty years, there won’t be any fish left to be pulled out of the
sea.
How can we solve this global problem? Potential solutions
for over fishing are already being put in place by States such as Alaska who
are limiting not only the number of boats that can fish in their waters but
also the time period of how long fishermen can stay in those waters. More
efforts like this should be made: decreasing the size of fish nets, more
banning of fishing grounds, etc.
