Illustration by Selina Wang
Marine life is one of the most important sources of food for the planet. In fact, the United Nations reports that currently 3.2 billion people rely on fish for almost 20 percent of their animal protein intake. Many communities survive off of fish, and fishing is a livelihood for many. Although fish have always been viewed as a never ending renewable source of food, that is very far from the truth. When overfishing is the norm, and the fishing industry’s methods are destroying marine environments, the sharp decrease in marine life becomes a big issue. It is so extreme of an issue, that a four year study of more than 7,800 marine species found that over 29 percent of the species of seafood that humans consume have had their population significantly depleted. It is predicted that if current fishing methods continue, by 2048 there will be little to no fish available in the ocean.
The first part of the issue is overfishing. Currently, fish populations are being fished at a rate faster than they can recover. In order to stop overfishing, fisheries would have to implement policies which incentivized fishermen to fish more sparingly.
The policies would be based around different species breeding seasons and other factors in order to give them enough time to reproduce sufficiently. One example of such initiatives in action would be in South Korea or Alaska, where overfishing has been swapped out for more sustainable forms of fishing.
Secondly, fisheries would have to adopt fishing techniques that do not harm the ecosystems marine life live in. Methods such as bottom trawling or longline fishing are extremely effective when it comes to catching fish, but severely damage the ecosystems they are used in. Bottom trawling involves dropping a long net on the seafloor in order to catch fish. This issue with it is that bottom trawling does not catch specific fish, instead scooping up everything on the seafloor. This uproots many plants and other organisms, ruining ecosystems. In order to combat this, more sustainable methods of fishing such as purse seining, harpoon fishing, or pole and line fishing would have to be prioritized. Although the amount of fish caught per day would decrease, sustainable fishing methods would ensure that fish could still be caught in the future.
Fish may seem like a never-ending source of food, but in order for fishing to be a renewable source of food, fisheries will have to take more care in fishing sustainably. Although this would lead to lower profits and yields in the short term, in the long run, fish will be secured as a source of food and income for hundreds of years to come.