Welcome to the over-fishing page of the Environment & Resource Management Class of 2013-14 of Danforth Tech CI.
- * What is Over fishing ?
- * How does over fishing affect the human population on a global scale?
- *what are fishing fleets?
- * what is the history of over-fishing?
*What is over-fishing?
Over-fishing is the act of catching to much fish for the system to support it self which leads to overall degradation on the system. Over-fishing is an unsustainable use of the ocean.-
http://overfishing.org/pages/what_is_overfishing.php
In other words it is the act of fishing to frequently, which does not give fish the chance to repopulate which could result in a possible collapse of the system. (Not enough fish to support the ecosystem and the human population)
* How does over fishing affect the human population on a global
http://mindilbeachmarkets.com/
https://www.facebook.com/mindilbeachmarkets
There are lots of people out in the world that are environmentally aware, but most people think of people that care about the environment in typical business clothing, but..
Mindil Beach Markets is a rock band that started in 2008 and came form Victoria, BC, they launched an awareness campaign that targets over-fishing and is touring across Canada promoting this point and to get the rest of the Canadian population aware of the fact that our society is coming to a point where we need to have a sustainable way to feed ourselves, many experts say that people should have a low meat diet, but to be really environmentally friendly, people should fall into a vegetarian diet.
In fact, on September 30th, 2013, they came to Danforth Collegiate and Technical Institute to perform and spread their wisdom of environmental awareness on our grade 9's and 12's. Which was the whole entire reason I am writing this article on them and how they can really teach us a thing or two about our environmental habits. So, if we all grew our food, we would cut down on our carbon emissions by a lot, which means cleaner air and better environment for our future generations, and we have a nick name of the U-Turn Generation, which means we CAN do something about the crisis. The only thing that we need to do is determine whether or not we decide to take this crisis head on. If we do, we cna basically undo the damage that was done by previous generations and how we can be sure that later generations will not make the exact same mistakes that other people made.
Over>fishing
"Give a man a fish and he eats for a day, teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime "- The Bible
http://www.ypte.org.uk/environmental/over-fishing/29
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let's start with the fact that 7 percent of the fish population has been depleted. And all the fisheries care about is the amount of fish they get, and the instrument of choice is the net, which catches all fish that are too big to fit through the holes in the net, which they kill if they don't need it, did you know that for every tonne of prawns caught, three tonnes of other fish and sea creatures are cruelly killed and then thrown overboard...
How does commercial fishing work?
Nets are strung at set spots and for a period of time, like overnight, when the animals can not swim, which they need to do in order to be able to breathe, or if the fish live deeper down, trawlers come in and "trawl" the bottom, which means that they drag a net across the bottom and catch all the fish at the bottom...
Dolphin Safe
Tuna fishing received much publicity in the 1990s when a boycott led to changes in fishing practices to avoid catching dolphins which often swim alongside yellowfin tuna. They did this by fitting special hatches in the nets from which dolphins could escape.
To combat the sale of tuna likely to involve dolphin catching you can look out for the 'dolphin safe' logo on tins of tuna at the supermarket. But be wary - this doesn't guarantee sustainable fishing practices are in use. For more information see this report by Sea Forever -Dolphin-friendly tuna – is it a meaningless label?
Skipjack tuna are more likely to be dolphin safe because they do not associate with dolphins. However the dolphin safe label does not guarantee the safety of other marine creatures such as sharks, rays and turtles. Between 60 - 70% of tuna are caught using the purse seine method. Usually they are lured by fish aggregation devices (FADS), floating devices which the tuna congregate under and the net is pulled up around them like large drawstring bag. In fact 10% of the catch using this method are unwanted bycatch, amounting to 100,000 tonnes annually. Some of the bycatch is made up of sharks, many of which are threatened species. Their fins are cut off to sell to make a Chinese delicacy - shark fin soup. Without the FADS, this method can be specifically targeted to a school of one adult species and avoids much as the bycatch.
Long-line fishing is a method used to catch more expensive kinds of tuna. This method involves putting out fishing lines up to 100km long from which there are as many as one thousand shorter lines attached with baited hooks. This still indiscriminately kills un-targeted marine life such as turtles (of which 6 out of 7 species are considered threatened) which are tempted by the jelly fish appearance of the bait. Albatrosses and other seabirds can also get caught on the hooks. An estimated 500,000 - 1.4 million sharks are killed every year this way.
The pole and line method and “trolling” (where baited lines are dragged through the water behind a boat) are considered as the most sensible methods of fishing as it targets the adult fish, bycatch is much reduced and unwanted catches can be returned to the sea, alive. This is often the chosen method of smaller fisheries.
The Effects of Over-fishing on Other Wildlife
The overfishing of a particular species does not just damage the population of that fish alone. It can have serious effects further up the food chain. Herring is a vital prey species for the cod. Therefore, when herring are overfished the cod population suffers as well. The sand eel is the main food for seabirds such as the puffin. Sand eels have been fished around the Shetland Islands since the mid-1970s, though catches were declining throughout the 1980s. At the same time, the colonies of seabirds nesting around Shetland declined, with some even failing to breed for several years.
In the Antarctic, fishing for krill is threatening to disrupt the delicate balance of nature in these waters. Krill are small, red shrimps, about 6cm long, found in huge numbers in areas of plant plankton, and they make up a significant part of the animal plankton. Krill occur in huge swarms many kilometres across, and it has estimated that there could be up to 650 million tonnes of them in the Antarctic Ocean.
Since the early 1980s, six countries, including Japan and the former USSR have been harvesting krill, which is the main food for the great whales, and which also supplements the diets of seals, penguins, squid and fish. We have no idea what effects this will have on the populations of animals which feed on krill. The natural balance in the Antarctic has already been upset by the over exploitation of the great whales, and heavy fishing of krill may well worsen the situation
For more information, please go to: http://www.peta.org/issues/animals-used-for-food/commercial-fishing.aspx
Future of Overfishing By: Stanley Tam
After reading and watching all the stunning information above, you maybe wondering what can we do and how can we stop it?
There are multiple ways we can stop it...
1. If you are a full meat eater, please take a pledge to be vegetarian or eat less meat for a longer and longer period of time,
http://www.meat.org has a lot of good info on the other side of the meat production, where we give you the the "white meat" (aka fish and other seafood). and they give you the "red meat" like pork, beef and other sources of red meat.
2. Eat less fish or meat in general which ties into the previous point where you can make a pledge to be a vegetarian and save the world, as a famous philosopher says that we are the change we make, and if we all make the pledge to be vegetarian, we can live to be happy, and our fishy counter parts can roam wildly and stay wild so they won't be caught by fisheries and killed for met to satisfy humans.
3. We can make the best out of our food supply and get all our NEEDS and not satisfy our WANTS which are totally different, once we get something we NEED, we always think of stuff we WANT, but we don't really need it, which i think is something we can live without.
fun facts :
FACT****
Water quality across the US is threatened by phosphorus and nitrogen, two nutrients present in animal wastes. In excessive amounts, nutrients often cause an explosion of algae that robs water of oxygen, killing aquatic life. One toxic microorganism, Pfiesteria piscicida, has been implicated in the death of more than one billion fish in coastal waters in North Carolina.
FACT/****
After reading and watching all the stunning information above, you maybe wondering what can we do and how can we stop it?
There are multiple ways we can stop it...
1. If you are a full meat eater, please take a pledge to be vegetarian or eat less meat for a longer and longer period of time,
http://www.meat.org has a lot of good info on the other side of the meat production, where we give you the the "white meat" (aka fish and other seafood). and they give you the "red meat" like pork, beef and other sources of red meat.
2. Eat less fish or meat in general which ties into the previous point where you can make a pledge to be a vegetarian and save the world, as a famous philosopher says that we are the change we make, and if we all make the pledge to be vegetarian, we can live to be happy, and our fishy counter parts can roam wildly and stay wild so they won't be caught by fisheries and killed for met to satisfy humans.
3. We can make the best out of our food supply and get all our NEEDS and not satisfy our WANTS which are totally different, once we get something we NEED, we always think of stuff we WANT, but we don't really need it, which i think is something we can live without.
fun facts :
FACT****
Water quality across the US is threatened by phosphorus and nitrogen, two nutrients present in animal wastes. In excessive amounts, nutrients often cause an explosion of algae that robs water of oxygen, killing aquatic life. One toxic microorganism, Pfiesteria piscicida, has been implicated in the death of more than one billion fish in coastal waters in North Carolina.
FACT/****