Commercial fishing, more destructive than you may think.
However we also have our own OverFishing problems here. Now i know a lot of people go on about "saving the whales", but my approach is a bit different. In NewZealand waters there are five species of squid and octopus endemic to NewZealand that are critically endangered and facing extinction. The sad thing is that three of these species were only described as recently as 1999. “Tragically, many are yet to be discovered and some are likely to become extinct even before they are known to science." But how does this effect whales? Sperm whales consume around 800 to 1000 squid a day, if these populations keep declining sperm whales will migrate from NewZealand shores in search for food. In turn this will also damage the NewZealand economy as whale watching is one of the main tourist attractions in the South Island.
I would just like to say that this is my own view point, however i belive this is the only view point, on this topic and am more than happy to hear your feedback even if it is against my views ^_^
Destructive. Its the only word that comes to mind when one looks at the fishing methods of a commercial fisherman. Lets take a look at some of them. Gill trap nets are nets that trap and suffocate anything that swims into it. These nets are left out on the water for weeks on end before retrieving them, meaning most of the catch will have rotted, making it very clumsy and wasteful. There are also times when these nets go missing and start floating around the ocean floor killing everything that gets caught in it. These missing nets are referred to as "Ghost-Nets".
According to this site it was found that fish caught in ghost nets decompose in 10 days or less. This makes it hard to really see the damage the net causes as the evidence of the deaths they cause soon vanishes. One net was calculated to have killed 2,300 fish and 1,200 marine birds during its 15 years as a ghost net.
Trawling. Bottom trawls are huge nets which scrape the ocean floors in search for commercially targeted fish, however when your just scraping the floor for anything you get a lot of what you don't want as well. This is referred to as "By-catch", the non-targeted fish of the trawl, and is usually found on deck already dead or dying. In the southern California spot prawn trawl fishery for every 1 pound of targeted fish there was 17 pounds of By-catch thrown back into the ocean.
Not only is trawling the most wasteful way of fishing, but it is also extremely destructive. These bottom trawls cause extreme damage to the habitats of fish that are made up of corals and sea sponges, some of which can be hundreds of years old. So not only is trawling wastefully killing fish but its also destroying their homes. This is effecting us at home as well. One of the richest habitats for sea life in NewZealand waters are the "Seamounts", these are in excess of 800 underwater volcanoes that rise from the ocean floor. These Seamounts are home to many species of fish, squid, and coral, some that are unique to particular seamounts. Seamounts have a conical shape meaning they can be trawled from almost any direction, with many showing the scars of multiple trawls leaving only a small area untouched.
Its a combination of these destructive practices that has lead to many of the fish populations in the world being over fished. In the southern California spot prawn trawl fishery for every 1 pound of targeted fish there was 17 pounds of By-catch thrown back into the ocean.
Not only is trawling the most wasteful way of fishing, but it is also extremely destructive. These bottom trawls cause extreme damage to the habitats of fish that are made up of corals and sea sponges, some of which can be hundreds of years old. So not only is trawling wastefully killing fish but its also destroying their homes. This is effecting us at home as well. One of the richest habitats for sea life in NewZealand waters are the "Seamounts", these are in excess of 800 underwater volcanoes that rise from the ocean floor. These Seamounts are home to many species of fish, squid, and coral, some that are unique to particular seamounts. Seamounts have a conical shape meaning they can be trawled from almost any direction, with many showing the scars of multiple trawls leaving only a small area untouched.
Its a combination of these destructive practices that has lead to many of the fish populations in the world being over fishedTen years after the passage of amendments to the federal Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act that required ailing fish stocks be rebuilt as quickly as possible. Most fish resources are still in poor shape, according to a study released by the Lenfest Ocean Program. To date, only three out of the 67 fish stocks identified as "overfished" have been rebuilt. They are Atlantic sea scallops, Pacific whiting, and Pacific lingcod. The rest are still under a healthy level or being exploited. In this article is a ratio for sea areas of rebuilt to still unhealthy fish stocks. And yet nearly half of the fish stocks under rebuilding plans today are still fished so heavily they simply cannot recover.
Destructive. Its the only word that comes to mind when one looks at the fishing methods of a commercial fisherman. Lets take a look at some of them. Gill trap nets are nets that trap and suffocate anything that swims into it. These nets are left out on the water for weeks on end before retrieving them, meaning most of the catch will have rotted, making it very clumsy and wasteful. There are also times when these nets go missing and start floating around the ocean floor killing everything that gets caught in it. These missing nets are referred to as "Ghost-Nets".
According to this site it was found that fish caught in ghost nets decompose in 10 days or less. This makes it hard to really see the damage the net causes as the evidence of the deaths they cause soon vanishes. One net was calculated to have killed 2,300 fish and 1,200 marine birds during its 15 years as a ghost net.
Trawling. Bottom trawls are huge nets which scrape the ocean floors in search for commercially targeted fish, however when your just scraping the floor for anything you get a lot of what you don't want as well. This is referred to as "By-catch", the non-targeted fish of the trawl, and is usually found on deck already dead or dying. In the southern California spot prawn trawl fishery for every 1 pound of targeted fish there was 17 pounds of By-catch thrown back into the ocean.
Not only is trawling the most wasteful way of fishing, but it is also extremely destructive. These bottom trawls cause extreme damage to the habitats of fish that are made up of corals and sea sponges, some of which can be hundreds of years old. So not only is trawling wastefully killing fish but its also destroying their homes. This is effecting us at home as well. One of the richest habitats for sea life in NewZealand waters are the "Seamounts", these are in excess of 800 underwater volcanoes that rise from the ocean floor. These Seamounts are home to many species of fish, squid, and coral, some that are unique to particular seamounts. Seamounts have a conical shape meaning they can be trawled from almost any direction, with many showing the scars of multiple trawls leaving only a small area untouched.
Its a combination of these destructive practices that has lead to many of the fish populations in the world being over fished. In the southern California spot prawn trawl fishery for every 1 pound of targeted fish there was 17 pounds of By-catch thrown back into the ocean.
Not only is trawling the most wasteful way of fishing, but it is also extremely destructive. These bottom trawls cause extreme damage to the habitats of fish that are made up of corals and sea sponges, some of which can be hundreds of years old. So not only is trawling wastefully killing fish but its also destroying their homes. This is effecting us at home as well. One of the richest habitats for sea life in NewZealand waters are the "Seamounts", these are in excess of 800 underwater volcanoes that rise from the ocean floor. These Seamounts are home to many species of fish, squid, and coral, some that are unique to particular seamounts. Seamounts have a conical shape meaning they can be trawled from almost any direction, with many showing the scars of multiple trawls leaving only a small area untouched.
Its a combination of these destructive practices that has lead to many of the fish populations in the world being over fishedTen years after the passage of amendments to the federal Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act that required ailing fish stocks be rebuilt as quickly as possible. Most fish resources are still in poor shape, according to a study released by the Lenfest Ocean Program. To date, only three out of the 67 fish stocks identified as "overfished" have been rebuilt. They are Atlantic sea scallops, Pacific whiting, and Pacific lingcod. The rest are still under a healthy level or being exploited. In this article is a ratio for sea areas of rebuilt to still unhealthy fish stocks. And yet nearly half of the fish stocks under rebuilding plans today are still fished so heavily they simply cannot recover.
WWF states that the population of breeding tunas has been in a steep decline for the past ten years and will be totally wiped out in 3 years. In 2007, the breeding population of the bluefin, which includes fish over four years old and weighing over 35kg, was at 25%. The dramatic decline in bluefin populations is attributed to the huge demand in luxury seafood markets, pirate fishing, use of illegal spotting planes for chasing the tuna, overcapacity of the fishing fleets, fishing during the closed season, and under-reporting of the catches. About 70 percent of the world's fisheries are over-exploited or have already crashed. If this long-term trend continues, scientists have predicted that all current salt-water fish and seafood species will collapse by 2048.
However we also have our own OverFishing problems here. Now i know a lot of people go on about "saving the whales", but my approach is a bit different. In NewZealand waters there are five species of squid and octopus endemic to NewZealand that are critically endangered and facing extinction. The sad thing is that three of these species were only described as recently as 1999. “Tragically, many are yet to be discovered and some are likely to become extinct even before they are known to science." But how does this effect whales? Sperm whales consume around 800 to 1000 squid a day, if these populations keep declining sperm whales will migrate from NewZealand shores in search for food. In turn this will also damage the NewZealand economy as whale watching is one of the main tourist attractions in the South Island.
All this is damage is caused by wasteful fishing practices, such as trawling and gill netting, that cause many unessasary deaths among non-targeted speices and thier homes on top of overfishing that are cauing the sea life in our oceans to gradually diassapear. Sure because of all this we can still go to the supermarket and buy all the fish we want, but for how long can this continue? If we continue to destroy the breeding grounds and breeding populations of fish how are they ever going to recover? I myself fail to see a positive outlook on this subject and would hate to think there is one.
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ReplyDeleteSounds like you are very passionate about this.
ReplyDeleteHad a look at the link regarding Ghost Nets; it’s shocking how many fish have been caught through those, not to mention all the other animals and birds that have been killed in the process.
I like the fact the you go into detail about each method of fishing. For someone like me, who is not experienced in the matter, it is helpful to have this.
With my own knowledge of the current situation, and after reading your blog, I find the affects that this is having on so much of New Zealand’s marine life, devastating.
It is something we are quite well known for overseas, being environmentally friendly. But we are destroying this image rapidly.
I find, and correct me if I’m wrong, but most of the damage is being done by overseas visitors to New Zealand, who are aware of New Zealand’s plentiful oceans.
The limitations that are currently in place are not enough, and they are not being enforced.
I used to live next to a small beach, and the amount of times I saw groups of foreign fisherman throwing out their nets, was despicable. I wasn’t the first one to have a word to them about it.
I completely agree with your view point, but it would be interesting to have a different perspective. Possibly of someone that wasn’t born in New Zealand, because I think it has a lot to do with culture also.
Lauren.
I absolutely love fishing, but the way that commercial fishermen are killing our fish is disgusting. I don't think its wrong to fish in bulk, but the way that people do it is appauling.
ReplyDeleteI also agree that the way they are fishing is destroying not only the fish, but damaging the seabed, coral, and ruining many natural habitats, which once again hurts the animals living there and further kills them within our waters.
But with that said, people need to eat, and with the worlds population growing bigger and bigger every day, its only a matter of time when even the laws of fishing can't stop the constant demand for food, weather its from the ocean, or not. However, I totally agree with your opionions on the matter, and if there was ever a time to fix this problem, now would be it.
I completely agree with your view on the digusting habits of commercial fishermen. Something must be done to change the way of which these people fish before they cause to much damage to sea lifes natural habitat and it becomes beyond repair.
ReplyDeleteIts sickening to think of how much sea life is killed just to be wasted it seems lazy, stupid and cruel for these people to fish in this way.
Thanks for the comments guys.
ReplyDeleteYes i do agree that the demand for food is increasing, however that makes even more of a reason to stop using these destructive fishing practices that destroy the homes of fish and kill "innocent by standers" so to speak.
To be honest I didn't really know much about how the fish were being caught un till about 3 months ago when i was disscussing this matter with a friend. I felt it nessasary to let people know how stupid our fishermen are. Also i couldn't find any info on this but my friend also told me about an arcticle she read about why so many whales are beaching themselves. The study showed that the majority of beached whales (the dead ones of course :P) had no food almost no food in their stomachs, meaning they were beaching because they were starving. If this is true then all fishermen on our shores are effectively killing the whales.
Just my two cents :D
Ok yes we all have to eat but this resource even though it is large may run out. Personal fishings is fine with me if you like to do it but on a commerical scale i dont agree with and also the methods.
ReplyDeleteAnd with the hard times at the moment are people going to want to get more fish to make as much money as they can.