« BACK TO FORUM
 Author |
 Post
|
 |
|
jodevizes
Joined: Jul 4, 2009
Posts: 204 (view all)
Poster Rank:
Chatterbox
User is
Offline
Gender & Age: Female & 27
Country: United Kingdom
Province/State: London, City of
City: London
|
Forget the climate and worry about the fish.
March 7, 2010 - 08:33 AM
|
|
I have seen a film called 'The End Of The Line' which is about the fishing industry and it is very scary.
The global position on fishing had been calculated on the catch reports from different countries. Whilst the species were being recorded as declining, catches were still going up. Now it turns out that the Chinese, in true Communist tradition, had to give an increase in fish catches year on year to show that the 'Glorious Revolution' was getting better in every way.
As soon as the Chinese figures were removed, the true picture of fish stocks have been revealed. They are due to run out by the middle of the century.
The brave chaps putting to sea in their little boats are a thing of the past, except in local circumstances, nowadays they have sophisticated location equipment that enables them to pinpoint the shoals and scoop them all up with nets that are big enough to hold 13 Jumbo Jets in.
Governments have bought in quotas, which means that fishermen can only land a certain amount of a species and then they can land no more. Trouble is nobody has told the net, so that it still brings up those species, but now they just get thrown overboard, dead.
Somebody had a great idea, cod and salmon dwindling? let's farm them. We can have huge mesh containers floating in the sea, full of fish crapping onto the sea bed and killing off everything there. Another problem is that it takes 4 or 5 kilos of food to make one kilo of farmed fish. This is why there are huge ships off South America, hovering up all the anchovies and others in the Antarctic hoovering up all the Krill which go to be processed into either fish food or fertilizers.
There is line fishing which is touted as being sustainable but with billions of hooks and enough line to go around the world over 20 times per year, I don't think it is that sustainable.
The film made much of the Blue Fin Tuna, but this has been declining for years. The big catches that were made by Sicilian and Spanish fishermen have been a thing of the very distant past. It was interesting to see the figures of Blue Fin taken by the Japanese over the years and how they have taken them all across the globe. Now, Mitsubishi, yes that one, has been cornering the market in Blue Fin and have many tons in huge deep freezers.
In many places, where flat fish and scallops are gathered, the sea bed is dragged many times per year, which takes out a whole host of other animals.
Here in the UK, if it hadn't been for World War 2 our fish stocks would have gone years ago.
The worse thing is that all the coastal people of the world are seeing their food source disappear, as is the other animals that rely on fish as their main. or only food source.
That is the problem. how on earth do we fix it?
|
|
back to top |
link to this post
|
|
takondwa kaliwo
Joined: May 8, 2008
Posts: 18 (view all)
Poster Rank:
Talkative
User is
Offline
Gender & Age: Female, 26
Country: Malawi
Province/State: Blantyre
City: Blantyre
|
Re: Forget the climate and worry about the fish.
March 9, 2010 - 04:52 AM
|
|
wow... touching arguments. i havent really thought about this topic but i know a little bit about fishing and its bussiness. i come from a land locked country and our source of fish is from one fresh water lake. there has been increasing arguments on how people should be fishing sustainably and how to take care of our fish. but the question still come bak to " so how do we deal with the people who earn their livelihoods through fishing?"
i dont know about developing countries like UK or China but in my country. we can not stop people from fishing unless we have an alternative Income generating activity...& for what i have heard it is more expensive to breed fish....& there is also the aspect of marketing. maybe people are fishing more because of an increase in demand. so issues of population also come into play...about who is really benefiting? because if the government is benefiting from the exports they cant do anything to jeorpadise the profits... so i think what u & me can do. atleast me. is to study more about the complexity of the problem and try to bring up practical solutions and advocate for solutions to the relevant authorities...in my country the best solutions might be introducing alternatives to fishing as and IGA... and fishing for only fish that is in demand...maybe....
|
|
back to top |
link to this post
|
|
|
Display posts from:
|
|
