China has the largest fishing fleet in the world at around 300,000 vessels, employing nearly eight million people, and accounts for one-third of the world’s reported fish production. Chinese boats land over 17 million tonnes of marine-life annually for human consumption.
As with land animals, there is now no excuse for killing threatened fish for sport and trophies. Despite this a significant minority of people in the sportfishing community are still killing these fish as proof of their endeavours in a similar vein to the great white hunters of the 1950s.
We got over the demise of the dodo, the passenger pigeon and even the Chinese river dolphin, but will we ever get over the upcoming possible extinction of sharks?
In recent reports the RSPB claim that climate change is altering the availability of sandeels and causing seabirds such as kittiwakes, Arctic terns and Arctic skuas to fail to breed successfully. What about fishing?
The objective of commercial fishermen is to catch fish that can be sold. The higher the price that these fish fetch at market, the more money the fishermen will make.
Most people accept that the North Sea has been subjected to the most appalling overfishing. Whitefish stocks have collapsed and the mackerel and herring fisheries are all but commercially extinct.
One of the long-established ecological principles is that large animals are less abundant than smaller ones. There are fewer elephants than antelope which are less numerous than rabbits. Because larger animals need more resources an ecosystem can support fewer of them.
Virtually every threat to life in the sea is attributable to our use of the ‘wait and see principle’, which allows overexploitation, ecosystem destruction or pollution so long as someone gains economically and the environmental consequences are uncertain.
China has the largest fishing fleet in the world at around 300,000 vessels, employing nearly eight million people, and accounts for one-third of the world’s reported fish production. Chinese boats land over 17 million tonnes of marine-life annually for human consumption.
As with land animals, there is now no excuse for killing threatened fish for sport and trophies. Despite this a significant minority of people in the sportfishing community are still killing these fish as proof of their endeavours in a similar vein to the great white hunters of the 1950s.
We got over the demise of the dodo, the passenger pigeon and even the Chinese river dolphin, but will we ever get over the upcoming possible extinction of sharks?
In recent reports the RSPB claim that climate change is altering the availability of sandeels and causing seabirds such as kittiwakes, Arctic terns and Arctic skuas to fail to breed successfully. What about fishing?
The objective of commercial fishermen is to catch fish that can be sold. The higher the price that these fish fetch at market, the more money the fishermen will make.
Most people accept that the North Sea has been subjected to the most appalling overfishing. Whitefish stocks have collapsed and the mackerel and herring fisheries are all but commercially extinct.
One of the long-established ecological principles is that large animals are less abundant than smaller ones. There are fewer elephants than antelope which are less numerous than rabbits. Because larger animals need more resources an ecosystem can support fewer of them.
Virtually every threat to life in the sea is attributable to our use of the ‘wait and see principle’, which allows overexploitation, ecosystem destruction or pollution so long as someone gains economically and the environmental consequences are uncertain.
Blue Planet Society is a volunteer pressure group campaigning to protect the world’s ocean. You can help us by making a donation today.
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