Look at that beast. Its magnificent, isn't it? Virtually all muscle, it has been known to swim 2,000 miles - non-stop - to return to mating grounds. Muscle is meat. And meat is food. And this fish is hunted all over the world. It's steaks are delicacies. And its less desirable parts are chopped up and put into cans. Not surprisingly, it is a top marine predator And it's disappearing at an alarming rate throughout the world's oceans.
It's a Yellow fin Tuna. And the one being hoisted over the head of the unseen fisherman is relatively small, and unremarkable average. Tuna grow can grow up to 2 meters long or so, and weigh up to 400-425 pounds. They reach sexual maturity at around 2 years. But few hit anywhere near 400 pounds now; clearly not the one lifted up in the photo. Few even reach the age of maturity needed in order to reproduce. Tuna, like most other top ocean predators are being hunted and caught at a rate faster than they can replenish their own populations. In other words, man is eating them at unsustainable levels.
The ocean's top predators are disappearing at an alarming rate. Not only the tasty ones like tuna (especially the Blue Fin Tuna, prized by Asian cuisine) and Swordfish (which I will no longer eat) but Sailfish, Marlin, and Sharks. Fish hunted for sport. For fun. For trophies. Trophy Fish? They are all disappearing.
When I taught Marine Biology at TA, I embedded a graph into the course syllabus that I distributed on the first day of school. The graph showed the actual decline of ocean fisheries from 1950 through the present, and the projected declines through to the middle of the 21st century. (I can't embed a second picture into this entry, but I'll post the graph in another entry that will precede this one) I think the last time I showed this graph to students was in 2007 - only four years ago. Students scoffed, they questioned, they expressed incredulity. Could this really happen Mr E? Could the oceans really die? Could oceans really turn into large "dead zones"?
It sure is looking that way. Current developments do not augur well for marine life. A week or so an article appeared in the Washington Post that was titled ""Predator Fish In Oceans On Alarming Decline, Experts Say" Basically, marine scientists gathered at the American Association For The Advancement of Science analyzed current data and titled their presentation with the startling title "2050: Will There Be Fish In The Ocean?". Their startling conclusion reflects the data in the graph from 2007: more than 54 percent of the decrease in large predator fish has taken place over the past 40 years.
Removing predators - especially sharks through sport hunting - has a profound effect on the oceanic food web. With the predators gone, new, smaller predators move in and re-set the balance of life. The former prey of sharks, tuna, etc. survive in large numbers, leading to starvation the quick collapse of populations. All that us left are the smaller scavenger fish. Scientists predict that there will in fact be ocean fish in 2050, but they will be smaller, less meaty, more "oily" populations: fish like anchovies, and species used for ground fish meal to feed to our farmed salmon. Salmon that will, no doubt, be genetically improved for more muscle, and greater size
Humans have always fished. We've just become much better at it: more efficient and mechanized. We now trawl - we drop and drag 2-mile long nets and capture anything and everything that gets in the net's path. How much fish is that? Well, in 2006 that was 76 million tons of fish. That is estimated to represent the capture of 70 trillion - that's TRILLION - fish. One million million, 10 to the 12th power, 10 followed by 12 zeros. Over the course of 1 year. And many of those fish were inedible. Garbage fish they're called. So they're thrown back, dead, into the ocean. Gotta feed those scavengers.
We've been hearing a lot about "peak oil", but it seems that we have also hit "peak fish". Fish populations are already getting smaller. Much smaller. At the same time, the populations are getting increasingly stressed out by the acidification of ocean water, and climate change raising ocean water temperature. As a result, marine plant life - the base of the ocean's food web - is also disappearing. And China is getting wealthier, and much hungrier. Affluence means having more than rice on your dinner plate. Especially in new restaurants. Chinese consumption of fish has risen dramatically during the past two decades, coinciding with their population's increasing wealth. I don't mean to criticize the Chinese. They only want what we have had for decades.
Several years ago when I went down to the Florida Keys, I entered a pub that had a huge blow up of the great American author Ernest Hemingway (a former patron) with a 900 pound Marlin that he had caught off The Keys. Marlin that size haven't really been seen for decades. Soon, they will be gone, as will all the great fish. The beasts that swim across the Atlantic and the Pacific. As well as the somewhat smaller ones of 2 - 3 years, the ones that are just starting their adult sexually maturity, and capable of replenishing the individuals lost to the hooks, and the harpoons, and the trawlers' nets.
And still we eat. We want to eat. We need to eat. And there are increasing numbers of "us" on the planet. Remember: took until the 1850s to reach the first billion humans on the planet. One hundred and sixty years later, we're pushing 7 billion. And by 2050 - the projected year of the oceans' "death" - 10 billion people.
I think you're all a bit too young to remember the Charlie The Tuna ads for Sunkist tuna. Charlie was an animated hipster tuna. He wanted to be chosen by Sunkist to be put into one of their cans. He was hip, so he had "good taste". The commercials tag line was "Sorry Charlie - Sunkist doesn't want tuna with good taste - it wants tuna that tastes good". Something tells me that Sunkist isn't going to be that choosy anymore. Maybe that's why they stopped running those ads.
Sorry Charlie. Your days are numbered. Say you were sitting at a table with representatives from countries around the world. What would you say to them? How would YOU present the problem, and more importantly, what solution (or solutions) would you propose?
It's your generation's world.......I know it's depressing, but what can we do? What should we do?
17 comments:
This will be the third time I try to write this blog response and if it doesn’t work I am going to shoot my computer so it better work.
The first thing that I thought of when I began reading this blog was the book The Young Man and the Sea by Rodman Philbrick. In the book this boy and his dad need money and his father can’t fish so the boy goes out into the ocean and catches the biggest tuna the town has ever seen (or something along those lines). The boy and his father then have enough money and happily ever after but my point is that this was a society that made its money on tuna. There are, most likely, many places in the world that survive solely on tuna. They probably don’t know that there is such a problem with over fishing the tuna, and if they do they don’t have anything else they can do. Tuna is probably their “cash crop”. Maybe if someone showed them a different cash crop they would fish less tuna.
Also as I am re-writing this I’m thinking that its not the places that rely solely on tuna that are the biggest problem but the giant companies that sell tuna commercially. Maybe another mercury scare happened then they wouldn’t catch as much tuna-supply and demand kind of thing.
Another thing that this article reminded me of was Jacob Osborne’s presentation in assembly about 350.org. He said that for earth to sustain life needed to reduce our pollution to 350 parts per million (or billion) and that was like how the tuna are being fished at a rate they cannot sustain.
Also, this article hit pretty close to home because im really interested in marine biology. Mr.E is there something that our class can do?
AND, if we are so advanced in our fishing techniques what is with those huge nets that scrape the ocean floor. I’ve read about them before and they are one of the stupidest things we have come up with. When they pull up all those fish they pull up tons of fish they don’t want. If they came up with a specialized net that only caught what they wanted then that would save a lot of fish. There would still be a serious problem for the fish that were being caught but it’s a start.
My generation has a crap load of work to do! First of all, awareness needs to be spread when it comes to just how serious this problem is. I have lived on the coast line for most of my life and I didn’t know just how serious it is, and what about those who don’t live anywhere near a coastline. Every year over 700million people visit the WAZA aquariums (that’s not counting non-affiliates) and I don’t think aquariums give enough information on the problem. I went to aquariums this summer and there was no information at them. If people were shown the danger these animals are in while they are there they might want to help. Also if bracelets like the live strong ones were sold and catchy bumber stickers were sold and the profits went to helping the animals in the sea. We just need to work together to solve the problem instead of fighting each other and maybe we could do something. “Alone we can do so little and together we can do so much” -Helen Keller.
Sydney
Such a hard problem to solve. Obviously we can't just say "STOP FISHING" because there are way to many fish lovers out there in the world and we don't want to piss them off...
So what should we do? Good question. Personally, I think that the sport of fishing should just be put to rest. People that use fishing as a sport are, in my opinion, ridiculous. For me, it's hunting in general. To use the death of animals as a sport is incredibly inhumane. So that would be a good start; get rid of the "sport." Like what was mentioned in the article, these "fisherman" set out to find the biggest and baddest fish and it turns out, those are the ones the ocean needs the most to survive. It's a baby step. That's what getting this planet back in order is all about: baby steps. Obviously I'm not saying "stop fishing" in general because, like I said, that would be completely absurd. We eat fish. Like Mr. E said, we NEED food. No getting around that. But if we could at least eliminate the option of killing fish for no reason, that could at least make a glitch for the better on a graph.
Hmm, what else could we do? What about limits? What if countries could only buy/obtain a certain amount of fish a year? This would be incredibly difficult, just like any other solution, but it's worth a try. Actually, is there a limit? If there's not, I'm sure we could find some reasonable number. It would be hard to control countries that are directly on the border of bodies of water; they can go over that limit easily by walking and fishing themselves. But if large "powerhouse" countries, like the United States and China, could cut back, I'm sure it could make a difference. Once again, baby steps.
Let's hope some solution will be made. After all, who REALLY likes sardines? Do we really want that to be our only fish option???
Oh my god I need to get better at labeling my comments! Above comment is MOLLY.
When reading information or an article such as this, it is hard to not think about the subject on a personal level. One usually thinks about how much they contribute to the issue that is being discussed, and this is exactly what first came to mind to me. I am a vegetarian (as most of you already know). For me, this means that I do not eat any kind of meat or fish. It only made sense that the minute I began to read this article I thought: “O well…that’s not me!” But then I started thinking about it on a more broad level.
The capturing and killing of fish are means of nutrition, I know this. It is just like meat—you do not need it to survive, but there are billions of people in the world that consume it every day. It would be stupid and unrealistic to ask these people to all of sudden stop eating fish. But as Mr. Engler mentioned in his “Charlie Advertisement” example, in the future the fish that people will be eating will not be the same. The quality will go down, while people try to make the quantity go up. So how can we solve this problem?
I agree with Molly when she talks about hunting animals and killing or just capturing fish for sport. I do not see how harming other animals can be even considered a sport and really, when one thinks about it, it’s disgusting. We have turned into a race that takes pride in shooting an innocent deer, and has competitions for the biggest fish we can catch. So when Molly says that this should stop first off, I completely agree.
As the graph shows, fish are declining at a rapid rate. This question isn’t even: what WOULD you do in this situation? But more: what WILL we do? The future for marine life seems inevitably bad if we keep up what we’re doing. I think that the control and organization of fish hunting must come into play in order to boost reproduction up again. Also there should be areas (there are some, but more) where fish can just live happily and breed amongst each other. With areas such as this, marine life can stay on the planet. There really needs to be organization and control of the situation and that is what I would say to the world leaders about fish. Imagine if every town had just a small reserve for fish and wildlife; marine life would boost its self and fishing would be controlled.
Although I do not eat fish, I understand how humans have affected the marine life… (among many other things we’ve done to the planet). I hope that people can come together to protect the marine life because we do dependent on it as a population, environment, and world.
I one hundred percent agree with Molly and Oriana about the hunting. There should be a ban on killing animals for fun, not just ones that are endangered. It is disgusting that we have come to the point where some people get a high out of killing other living things for competition. This should not be allowed especially because it is only for competition, and not for survival needs. Also because the fish that are being killed for sport are in danger.
Like Sydney mentioned, there are villages that actually rely on tuna and fish to survive, it is their staple food. In situations like this it would be hard to ration how much they can fish because realistically they have been relying on this food source for most of their history and these villages and towns are not the danger here.
In my eyes the main danger is the giant commercial companies who are sending giant nets into the ocean and killing so many fish that are not even going to be used for food or resources. These companies are stripping the ocean of its life simply to make a ridiculous amount of money.
If these companies would realize that the amount of money in their paycheck won't matter when there are no fish left in the ocean, they might have a better grasp in the effect they are having on the planet.
I agree that there should be some kind of laws put in place addressing how many fish can be taken at a time and certain times that there should be no fishing at all.
The ocean is an important part of this planet and if we do not start protecting it we will soon find ourselves in irreversible trouble that we have caused due to our obsession with always satisfying what we want all the time, not just what we need.
-Sarah
This article reminds me of a documentary I saw about feeding the world with the oceans. One man in that movie said something that stuck with me, and it's what i thought about throughout this article. He was a scientist being questioned about fish populations and he said something along the lines of "if we can't sustain the world's populations with hunting game what makes us think we could do so with the oceans?" I understand that currently we can't really farm tuna because it is so hard to get the to breed in captivity, but it has been done at least once. I believe that if tuna companies want to continue selling tuna in the future they will need to invest in producing a facility that can grow tuna.
I don't think we will stop harvesting tuna until they are all gone. There is too much money to be made. I have seen videos of the fish markets where the Japanese will spend a LOT of money for fine quality sushi tuna. In order to stop the fishing countries would have to collaborate to make a ban on the commercial fishing of tuna.
Before reading this article I knew about the 2 mile long nets but I didn't really comprehend all the fish that just get caught and just thrown back into the ocean. In order to solve this problem something would have to happen fast, and everyone would have to stop eating tuna. I don't think that is very realistic without any real government effort.
The amount of fish that we consume is alarming. I personally don't eat fish just because i don't like the taste, but my sister loves fish. She eats it just about any way that it comes; especially raw.
I love going to the ocean, or aquariams and seeing all of the amazing things that live in the waters on our earth. Some of the fish are so big that it seems unreal. The fact that we take these creatures for granted is so hard to watch. They are amazing and they are here on earth for more then just our pleasure.
My aunt is a photographer for National Geographic and her and her fiance own a sailing company and their job is to sail people around the world. So she has amazing opportunities to see amazing things and take amazing pictures. She loves the ocean so she takes a lot of pictures of it and what's in it. She has some incredibly sad pictures of some fishermens trawlers (nets) and the mass amount of dead fish that they have to throw back because they are inedible. These pictures make you realize the damage that is being done to our oceans, and our planet as a whole. We expect our planet to survive whatever we put it through, but we're killing it and before we know it it's going to be dying faster then we can save it.
I hope that as a population we can come up with a solution or new laws regarding the amount of fish that is permitted to be caught each year. I would hope that we could protect out oceans by banning fishing in some parts of them as well.
-Marley
OK, so I just published an awesome response, but it was deleted, so now I'm going to try again, OK maybe it wasn't so awesome anyway. I started out by saying that I totally disagreed with Molly and that the only way to solve this problem is to prohibit commercial fishing and the economy be damned.
But then I had a better idea. I don't know how many of you know this, but yesterday marked the beginning of the Christian season of Lent. Traditionally, Lent is a season of doing penance for your sins. But that doesn't really matter here. What matters is that it is a season that requires us to abstain. For the next forty days, all Catholics must refrain from the consumption of flesh on Fridays. I know, it doesn't sound like a lot, but here me out. It used to be that this was required all year long, but Vatican II did away with that. On a larger scale though, this provides an interesting solution to our fishing problem. What if a country that ate a lot of fish, lets stick with China, were to abstain from eating seafood for just one day a week? As of last July, China was the home of some 1,330,141,295 people. Many of these people may eat fish for two or even three meals a day. Let's pretend that each of these people eat about five ounces of fish every day, honestly, that's too little. That means that China is consuming 6,650,706,475 ounces of fish every day. Now, Imagine what it would be like if all of China decided to to not eat fish one day a week. Look at how much fish just wasn't eaten. If this was done for a while people would see how easy it was to abstain for one day, then maybe they would take another day off from fish. Now, with three days of no fish consumption, China suddenly has half of the seafood demand of previous years. Cool right? What if we got all of the world to do that? Wow. That is actually the best way to eat with all types of food, combined with eating local, experts say.
The problem with this is getting people to participate. That means educating people as to why they must stop eating their favorite foods, and convincing them that it is the right thing to do. Who wants to be in charge of getting the right information to 1,330,141,295 Chinese? To the entire world? No one wants to take that responsibility. But someone has to if we want to see any kind of change.
well i dont think their is much that you or i can do, i mean "we" could stop eating fish, but i dont really think itll help. maybe scientist can start cloneing fish in special labs just for people to eat, instead of the supermarket ordering from the ocean they could get all of their fish from a lab, i mean kinda sounds creepy but think about it, we are starting to filter waste water as drinking water, why not figure out a way to "make" the food.
I don't know if there is much that we can do to solve this. It's not the fishermen's fault that this is happening. It's because we have too many people on earth: more people means we need more food. However, this doesn't mean that this is impossible. There are ways to reduce our impact, such as growing your own food or buying locally, but people don't want to do this because they are too lazy (I am a culprit) or because they aren't willing to pay more for local products.
Because these seem like the only solutions at the time, I think that the crucial thing we need to do for our generation is sacrifice. This would also help for other problems, such as global climate change, because if we can sacrifice things like eating so much fish or driving everywhere we go, we can make a huge difference. Obviously, people can and will object to this because they say they have the right to do whatever they want. But what they can't seem to understand is that if they continue to live like they are now, they will regret it later.
Ben
When i read this it brought back one of my most favorite memory's as a child. One that was both amazingly happy and sad at the same time. When I went to maine about five years ago, I was able to be witnessed to something so tragic and beautiful that it brought tears to my eyes when I witnessed it.
While we were staying in a hotel in a small town on the coast of maine we got bored one day and walked down to the pier. There was a 400 lb blue fined tuna!!
It was amazing to see an animal so large and amazing. However it was not going to stay that way , because of the fact that it whould shortly be shoved into cans and food trays all over the world.
How sad this fact made me was unbelivable.
I think that the way fisheries are killing off these animals is going to just have detramental effects on the world. and it already is being seen today. I only wish that the goverment would inforce stricker laws on the fisher men for there over fishing. If the ocean becomes a dead zone many many people will die from lack of food. And thats o nly one effect it will have. Its simply not an option.
When i read this it brought back one of my most favorite memory's as a child. One that was both amazingly happy and sad at the same time. When I went to maine about five years ago, I was able to be witnessed to something so tragic and beautiful that it brought tears to my eyes when I witnessed it.
While we were staying in a hotel in a small town on the coast of maine we got bored one day and walked down to the pier. There was a 400 lb blue fined tuna!!
It was amazing to see an animal so large and amazing. However it was not going to stay that way , because of the fact that it whould shortly be shoved into cans and food trays all over the world.
How sad this fact made me was unbelivable.
I think that the way fisheries are killing off these animals is going to just have detramental effects on the world. and it already is being seen today. I only wish that the goverment would inforce stricker laws on the fisher men for there over fishing. If the ocean becomes a dead zone many many people will die from lack of food. And thats o nly one effect it will have. Its simply not an option.Amelia
When i read this it brought back one of my most favorite memory's as a child. One that was both amazingly happy and sad at the same time. When I went to maine about five years ago, I was able to be witnessed to something so tragic and beautiful that it brought tears to my eyes when I witnessed it.
While we were staying in a hotel in a small town on the coast of maine we got bored one day and walked down to the pier. There was a 400 lb blue fined tuna!!
It was amazing to see an animal so large and amazing. However it was not going to stay that way , because of the fact that it whould shortly be shoved into cans and food trays all over the world.
How sad this fact made me was unbelivable.
I think that the way fisheries are killing off these animals is going to just have detramental effects on the world. and it already is being seen today. I only wish that the goverment would inforce stricker laws on the fisher men for there over fishing. If the ocean becomes a dead zone many many people will die from lack of food. And thats o nly one effect it will have. Its simply not an option.Amelia
When i read this it brought back one of my most favorite memory's as a child. One that was both amazingly happy and sad at the same time. When I went to maine about five years ago, I was able to be witnessed to something so tragic and beautiful that it brought tears to my eyes when I witnessed it.
While we were staying in a hotel in a small town on the coast of maine we got bored one day and walked down to the pier. There was a 400 lb blue fined tuna!!
It was amazing to see an animal so large and amazing. However it was not going to stay that way , because of the fact that it whould shortly be shoved into cans and food trays all over the world.
How sad this fact made me was unbelivable.
I think that the way fisheries are killing off these animals is going to just have detramental effects on the world. and it already is being seen today. I only wish that the goverment would inforce stricker laws on the fisher men for there over fishing. If the ocean becomes a dead zone many many people will die from lack of food. And thats o nly one effect it will have. Its simply not an option.Amelia
When i read this it brought back one of my most favorite memory's as a child. One that was both amazingly happy and sad at the same time. When I went to maine about five years ago, I was able to be witnessed to something so tragic and beautiful that it brought tears to my eyes when I witnessed it.
While we were staying in a hotel in a small town on the coast of maine we got bored one day and walked down to the pier. There was a 400 lb blue fined tuna!!
It was amazing to see an animal so large and amazing. However it was not going to stay that way , because of the fact that it whould shortly be shoved into cans and food trays all over the world.
How sad this fact made me was unbelivable.
I think that the way fisheries are killing off these animals is going to just have detramental effects on the world. and it already is being seen today. I only wish that the goverment would inforce stricker laws on the fisher men for there over fishing. If the ocean becomes a dead zone many many people will die from lack of food. And thats o nly one effect it will have. Its simply not an option.Amelia
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