Some metaphorical quotes have no literal sense at all. "Every cloud has a silver lining," "You have the heart of a lion," and "It's raining cats and dogs." Clouds don’t have silver, you’ll get arrested for taking a lion’s heart, and no matter how much I want it to happen, there will never be any kittens falling from the sky. On the other hand, there are sayings that relate an abstract term to something concrete. "I'm as busy as a bee," "Your smile is as bright as sunshine," and "There are plenty of fish in the sea"… bees are busy, sunshine is bright, and the sea contains plenty of fish… right? Our supply of seafood has been considered a given for thousands, if not millions, of years. After all, how can the ocean, which covers over 70% of the Earth, ever run out of life? If anything, an empty sea should be a distant dream of the future. But to some, this disaster is already showing its impacts, and we might be fishless far earlier than we think. According to The Guardian in 2021, “populations of… freshwater fish have plummeted by 76% since 1970”, and The New York Times wrote in 2019 that saltwater fish populations “...shrank by 4.1 percent from 1930 to 2010” alone. Overfishing is already a problem, and we must be educated on the current status of this issue. Today I will be talking about overfishing in three points of analysis: what it is, how it’s happening, and its future - and current - implications.
This is what a blobfish looks like at its natural habitat 600 meters under the sea, and this is what a blobfish looks like when you pull it up out of the ocean so quickly that its pressurized tissues collapse and it dies from decompression. Overfishing is part of the culprit.
“Katherine, water you talking about when you mention overfishing?” Well, Oxford Dictionary writes that overfishing is “to deplete the stock of fish in a body of water by too much fishing”. Yeah, I could have context clued that overfishing is ‘too much fishing’, but then again, Oxford Dictionary isn’t exactly Shakespeare. Fishing has long since evolved from old men throwing nets over oceans full of sardines or tossing flimsy, wooden rods into a crystal clear lake. Due to the fishing industry’s use of heavy, crude machinery that impacts coral, fish, and other marine life, fishing has turned into OVERfishing.
National Geographic of 2022 tells us that “the earliest overfishing occurred in the early 1800s when humans, seeking blubber for lamp oil, decimated the whale population… off the coast of Cape Cod.” By the mid-1900s, fish like Atlantic cod, herring, and California’s sardines were on the brink of extinction. In 2019, the National Academy of Science found that worldwide demand for affordable fish spurred a huge rise in industrial fishing operations. Policies, loans, subsidies, and agreements were all created to help the seafood industry. Believe it or not, the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations found that by 1989, over 90 million metric tons of fish had been fished out of the ocean. That’s more than the weight of 100 trillion chocolate chips! Ever since, the fish population has been declining or stagnant, falling to only 10% of the pre-industrial population.
Now that it’s o-fish-al that there really aren’t plenty of fish in the sea, let’s look at some practices causing overfishing.
Some recreational tourists on vacation won't do much, but commercial fishing companies will. These companies don't have the time to sit around with traditional fishing reels, waiting for a bite, so they rely on heavy equipment to do it more e-fish-ently. Some use a method called bottom trawling, where they use towlines to attach large, heavy nets to the backs of motorized boats. Once attached to weights weighing up to 1300 pounds, the nets drag along the ocean floor, collecting seafood and organisms, but also damaging coral reefs along the way. The result of this practice? According to the National Academy of Sciences, around 19 million tons of fish, invertebrates, and other sea creatures, but not all of these creatures are put into use.
When companies use methods such as bottom trawling, they’re usually hunting for a specific species. However, it’s impossible to control exactly what you catch, which leads to bycatching, a fancy word that means getting more than you asked for. Fish and other creatures that are caught accidentally are either thrown back into the ocean or killed and thrown away. Bycaught sea life is rarely utilized, despite how common it is. And the marine organisms getting released have low survival rates as well. Injuries from the equipment used in fishing methods – nets, cables, fishing lines, and weights – may prove lethal to marine life. Additionally, the stress of handling and changes in setting can lead to a weakened immune system, physical exhaustion, and a lack of natural bodily balance, which increases fatality rates for sea creatures.
Did you know that bananas are considered bad luck on fishing boats? They’re said to ward off fish, cause mechanical issues, or even encourage bad weather. But while these fruits are taking the blame for fishing incidents, we know who the culprits really are - humans.
The United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization estimates that 85% of marine fish stocks are either fully exploited or overfished, and according to a study cited by sources including Stanford, National Geographic, and CBS, saltwater fish will be extinct as soon as 2048! This study has been controversial among scientists and researchers because it did not reflect the global rebuilding of fish stocks since 2006 when it was made. However, even skeptical scientists, including Dr. Allen from the University of Bristol, all agree that overfishing is a major issue that “deserves widespread concern” and is “the biggest problem on the global high seas”. But this war between humans and sea life is slowly turning into a war between humans and humans. Only three years ago, Yale University reported various cases of human trafficking at sea. Migrants and stowaways had been “shackled by the neck” on fishing trawlers after they were promised passage to the United States, for a fee. But it turned out that this “fee” was paid with indentured servitude, with passengers spending years trapped aboard ships, working to catch marine life for their captors. Our overfishing situation has escalated to the point that people are willing to break international law just to get workers for their fishing boats.
The World Wildlife Organization found in 2022 that about 3 billion people depend on the sea as a primary source of protein, and that's more than a quarter of our world population! If so many people rely on the consumption and production of fish, what kind of implications for the future can we expect?
Well, in this sea of despair, we can find a raindrop of hope. The world is making an effort to cease these harmful fishing practices and replace them with better ones. For instance, the weighted nets used in bottom trawling are improving. Scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association have worked with the commercial shrimp trawling industry to make Turtle Excluder Devices, or TEDs, that help prevent turtles and other large sea creatures, like sharks and stingrays, from getting trapped in the nets. According to the creators of these devices, a TED is a grid of bars with an opening at the trawl net's top or bottom. Smaller sea creatures, such as shrimp, pass through the bars and are caught in the bag end of the trawl. When larger animals, such as sea turtles, are captured in the trawl, they strike the grid bars and are ejected through the opening.
Another way that we are combating the cold waves of overfishing is with aquaculture- or, as I like to call it, fish farming. With this, specific areas in the ocean are blocked off from wild fish. In these areas, marine animals and even marine plants are bred and fed to decrease dependence on native seafood. In the words of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, aquaculture can “help meet future food needs and ease burdens on natural resources”. Not only that, it can “boost economic growth in coastal and rural areas”, as according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association in 2020. As we can see, fish farms are a net benefit.
In conclusion, recreational fishing can be beneficial, and fish consumption is advantageous. However, dragging large nets over delicate coral reefs and balanced ocean habitats to get seafood we don't even need is not. So, let's stop being shellfish, draw the line between nature and machinery, and sea that there is some work to be done in order to, once again, be able to say that there is plenty of fish in the sea.
