If you struck up a friendly conversation with most any ocean fisherman today
and asked them how good their catch is each year, they'll often tell you they have "some good and some bad" years but that they usually catch "plenty of fish to get by" and that those fish are often "of good size". But what they and you often don't know is that the fish that fisherman is catching are, in most cases, vastly less abundant and smaller than they were a hundred years ago, before fisheries became super-industrialized. In fact, in many cases, fish catches have been reduced to a mere single-digit percentage of the population or a third of the size they used to be, as some of those same fish species used to weigh in almost constantly at hundreds of pounds and be hauled in as a supposedly limitless resource just 100 years ago.
Imagine a world where the oceans are devoid of visible, edible life except algae, plants, and maybe a few ocean creatures that aren't widely used in the world's seafood markets and prey almost exclusively on miniscule sea life, such as a few of species of jellyfish and whales. This world is completely possible, and actually becoming a reality, as unsustainable fisheries made up of local, national, and even international groups overfish the world's oceanic fish populations, taking fish out of the ocean faster than they can reproduce. This reduces their populations to sizes that are too small to survive and thus face the threat, or certainty, of extinction--as has actually occurred in hundreds of cases over the past mere hundred years that stands in comparison with millions of years of human history.
Even those marketable ocean creatures that have not yet gone extinct from overfishing are undergoing drastic changes: as the tools used for fishing are made to selectively capture the largest fish or largest numbers of fish, humans have caused the artificial selection or forced evolution of fish that are smaller, as that variety of fish is the more likely to escape capture. This has been scientifically verified over the past hundred years! Fish are also reproducing less than they used to, because as we capture the largest and more mature individuals from fish populations, we've left behind only the younger fish that reproduce less or often are too young to reproduce at all. These concepts have a colossal effect on the size and quantity of fish we see today!
So who has to pay attention to the world's fisheries to keep fish in the ocean? There are actually three societal levels that can engage in the protection and restoration of our oceans' bountiful seafood harvest.
Fishery and Government Institutions: Fisheries must pursue sustainable fishing practices . Of course, local, national, and even international government institutions must make laws that accurately reflect each situation at hand, and they then have to enforce these laws to put them into practice. Both fisheries and government institutions are additionally responsible to educate the members within their own institutions and the general public as to why sustainable fishing is necessary and what fisheries are actually sustainable.
Markets: This is the level where the fish caught in the oceans are prepared and bought to be placed on store shelves, cooked, or consumed. Those in management positions in the market can ensure they buy from sustainable sources only and actively avoid seafood fraud, which consists in 1. seafood substitution or swapping species of fish after they've been filleted and skinned, 2. adding excess ice, liquid, or breading to make the fish appear heavier, and 3. mislabeling the seafood's source or species.
Consumers: Sadly, the truth is that overfishing from unsustainable fisheries stands on the driving force of our consumption. But the hard truth has a surprisingly, and not deceivingly, simple solution--if we don't consume the fish that unsustainable and even illegal fishery activity puts into our markets, shops, and stores, those unsustainable fisheries will have no choice but to seek the supported and sustainable market that still exists. This brings into question, then, how can we know what the right things to do are as a consumer?
Check out https://www.fishwatch.gov/ , which is a part of the NOAA and also known as the United States government's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association. It explains all of the ins and outs of sustainable fisheries, seafood fraud, and kinds of action that are taken and can be taken to keep our ocean populations thriving.
Think twice about where you buy your food from. Do your local stores and restaurants boast that the source of their seafood comes from sustainable fisheries? If not, you can always ask, which can open doors to interesting and even eye-opening conversations!
Sources:
PBS Documentary, "Empty Nets, Empty Oceans"
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