One fish, two fish, red fish...no fish?
The modern fishing industry has evolved so completely that the image of fishermen reeling in fish on a line only exists in sport fishing. The fish that appear in our grocery stores, restaurants and on our tables are caught using advanced GPS and radar technology and massive trawling and longline operations that has truly turned fishing into an industrialized production.
And instead of being more efficient, both trawling and long lining is hugely wasteful and the cost to ocean environments is staggeringly huge. The industry faces its own type of "Catch-22." In order to compete with huge fishing fleets for quickly diminishing fish populations (which is caused by the fishing industry itself) fishermen use these techniques in order to turn a profit. Because of increasing global demand for fish and decreasing amounts of actual fish in the ocean, the fishing industry is literally destroying our world’s oceans, decimating fish populations and ocean ecosystems.
I personally know many people who claim to be vegetarians yet continue to eat fish. Why? Because they often believe that fish are a lower species, because fish don’t feel pain or fear, or because fish aren’t subjected to the same factory farming conditions that other animals are. (By the way, these are all fallacious arguments). However, if you don’t consider fishing to be a cruel industry, than you probably have no idea of the devastating effects it is having on our oceans. Even though I believe fish have a right to life, an even stronger argument to not eat them is how modern fishing is literally destroying the multitude of life that exists in our deep blue seas.
So, lets begin our journey into modern fishing industry by learning about by-catch, the living creatures that are caught unintentionally by fishing operations.
In 2006, we learned of the effective extinction of the Baiji dolphin that lived in the waters of the Yangtze River in China. A species that was around for 20 million years, the Baiji are the first cetaceans (aquatic mammals: whales, dolphins, porpoises) to disappear from our planet. Their extinction is entirely the fault of modern fishing and of by-catch. The fish populations that were the Baiji’s source of food were destroyed by the dredging of the river’s shallows, or they were caught in massive nets. The Baiji themselves were also often caught and killed by these operations. Heavy pollution due to fishing operations in the river also played a large role in destroying their environment.
This is a sad tale that illustrates the devastating effects of by-catch. It isn’t something new: ever since humans have fished they have caught by-catch, either throwing it back in the ocean if it’s too small or if they don’t want it, or using it. Inevitably, the catch process can injure or kill the by-catch. The problem now is that modern fishing has a specific "target species," so that by-catch is useless. Depending on the target species, by-catch may be anywhere from 1.5lbs to 14lbs per each pound of the target caught. This means that for every pound of fish used, 14 times that amount is thrown back dead and dying into the ocean. According to Greenpeace, the discard may be up to 90 percent of the fish caught.
And with the 1.4 billion hooks deployed annually on longlines, or the 1,200 30-mile nets used by a single fleet are definitely going to catch a lot of fish. Why do they have to go to such extremes? Well, since 90 percent of that catch is useless, they have to catch an enormous amount in order to get enough of a catch of the target species.
It is reasonable to assume that the unintended decimation of marine populations also has unintended effects on the marine species that feed on those populations. As a result, modern fishing is not only catching vast amounts of the intended catch, they are also disrupting the marine food chain, making it more difficult for those very species they want to catch to survive on reduced food populations.
This, by no means, is the only problem with industrialized fishing.
Bottom trawling is one of the most detrimental methods of industrialized fishing. It involves dragging weighted nets along the ocean floor. It not only destroys sea floor habitats; it also kills nearly everything in its path. Much of this deep-sea ecosystem will take decades to recover from this damage.
Another concern is how the growing demand for increased catch has led fishermen to catch and keep increasingly younger juveniles of their target species. This becomes problematic as many of the larger fish don’t spawn until they are full-grown, thus they are being captured and killed before they ever have the chance to reproduce.
Farmed fish operations are no better, as the concentrated numbers of fish create staggering amounts of pollution.
If you can’t give up eating fish, try to choose a more sustainable option. Use this list as a guide to help you make smarter choices.
