Something's Fishy...

Some people have large appetites, some people have eyes bigger than their stomachs, but when fish is brought onto the table our stomachs are larger than the ocean,this may sound silly but it's true! Our oceans can't handle the world's demand for fish, 1 of 5 people around the world are dependant on fish for protein, plus the millions around the world who use fishing as a source of income.

With fishing industries getting access to fish stock granted more than denied, it's extremely hard to prevent overfishing. Large fishing fleets take over the modern fishing industry and technology is improving rapidly giving these fleets incredible size and power.These ships are now able to locate schools of fish accurately, sometimes fishing out non targeted species and younger fish.



It's bad enough that the process of fishing is already faster than fish can reproduce but how can reproduction occur when the whole species is being wiped out (even babies)? These destructive fishing techniques have forced more than 70 percent of the worlds fishing stock to be either depleted or fully exploited.

Depletion and exploitation of targeted fish is not the only threat to marine biodiversity, we are also fishing down the food web.Fishing down the food web has many consequences, when we kill fish, we change the way organisms interact; dragging nets destroys habitats and a lot of bycatch is picked up, affecting marine biodiversity greatly.The loss of predators and larger fish changes biological interaction forcing larger fish to interact with smaller fish, this creates smaller species of fish. The food web then changes, making the ecosystems that once supported these organisms incapable of doing so, forcing them to either adapt or di

.

Life that was once present in these oceans have disappeared; abundant species are becoming scarce; predators are gone; even non targeted species fall victim. Although the world is on the verge of sucking the life out of the oceans, there is still hope! Strangely, we can reimburse our oceans. More so than land, the ocean can reset. If given time all the ocean's animals would return, all the organisms that have become smaller will grow back, all the relationships between organisms would rebuild, ecosystems would support all it's organisms again, but most importantly marine biodiversity would go back to how it was some 50 years ago... IT'S NOT TOO LATE!

References:
http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/campaigns/oceans/overfishing/
http://www.greenpeace.org/canada/en/campaigns/Seafood/archive/threats/overfishing/
COMMENTS:

Mark Yabut's Bio Blog:
http://biologysbi-3u1-04.blogspot.com/2010/10/greenpeace-activists-stop-massive-oil.html#comments
Jerwin Lalata's Bio Blog:
http://jerwinbioblog.blogspot.com/2011/04/oceans-are-in-crisis-greenpeace-has.html#comment-form