To Fish, or Not To Fish: The Costs of Overfishing
Over the past 60 years, the fishing industry has coincided with the majority of consumer-oriented industries and has found itself on an environmentally harmful upward trend. The current demand for fish across the world is higher than ever,and fisheries show little sign of stopping or even decreasing production. The increases in demand, consumption, and production have given the industry immense profits, but at the same time, the uptick has also depleted ocean populations, destroyed ocean habitats, and has heavily contributed to climate change. The problem stems from the culture of overconsumption, overfishing, and ineffective regulation. Since 2010 the global fishing industry’s total production has increased by roughly 35 million metric tons and is showing signs of an accelerating trajectory (World Bank 2021). In addition to the direct effects of overfishing, the industry itself creates enormous amounts of pollution annually. With waste dumping, gear discarding, and transportation, fishing is directly polluting the oceans more than any other industry. A recent study published in The Telegraph, though heavily debated, indicates that if nothing is done to change the current habits of the fishing industry, almost all of the world’s seafood stocks will collapse in less than 30 years (World Counts 2022). To save the ocean creatures and their ecosystems, change must happen now. The world as a whole must decrease its demand for fish and simultaneously keep the fishing industry accountable through regulation and scientific advancement.
The rise of consumerism over the past half-century has made global fish consumption double in the same period. The average person today consumes 20 kilograms of fish per year–aggregating to about 17% of worldwide animal protein consumption (Ritchie and Roser 2021). The fishing industry has taken advantage of this upward demand shift and, being a profit-seeking business, has greatly increased its scale over the past several decades. The worldwide industry today employs 60 million people and contributes over $1.5 trillion in value-added to the world economy every year (World Bank 2021). With annual sales of over $400 million, fishing’s importance to today’s world economy is undeniable (2021). The rise in fish demand across the world has made fisheries not only expand their reach but also improve their fishing technology. This new reach and technologies, although highly effective for the industry, have major negative externalities to ocean life.
Modern fishing affects ocean environments in several different ways. One of the more known externalities of fishing is the depletion of ocean populations. With the effectiveness of modern fishing gear, many international ocean fisheries are now in a tragedy of the commons situation. Tragedy of the commons occurs when fisheries think on an individual level and, in an attempt to maximize profits, fish at a rate that ocean populations are unable to keep up with. Today, we frequently see tragedies of the commons in the world’s oceans as nearly 80% of the world’s fisheries are either fully exploited, maximally exploited, or in a state of full collapse (World Counts 2022). This overfishing results in population declines for many long-lived, late matured species such as sharks, tuna, swordfish, and marlin who have collectively seen population declines of roughly 90% (2022). The decreases in populations not only lead the species to the brink of extinction but also heavily impact the ecosystems the species come from; through altering their food web and balance of habitat.
Another externality of modern fishing that cripples ocean ecosystems is bycatch. While fishing on large scales, fishermen cannot effectively control what fish they capture, and occasionally catch unwanted species. These unwanted captures are labeled as bycatch. Bycatch occurs due to methods such as gillnetting, the use of purse seines, and other large scale fishing techniques. The problem with bycatch is that once caught, the unwanted fish are thrown back into the ocean, often severely injured or dead due to the equipment. In cases of large scale fishing, not only are the target species being depleted, but bycatch harms the integrity of other species as well, compounding the negative effects to their ocean ecosystems.
One of the most harmful fishing techniques employed by modern capture fishermen is bottom trawling. Bottom trawling is the practice of pulling an extremely large net (up to the width of a football field) along the seafloor. This method is extremely popular for capture fishing as it accounts for over a quarter of all fish captured in the industry (Ritchie and Roser 2019). Its effectiveness, however, comes with major consequences. Bottom trawls effectively destroy the habitats they are dragged through by capturing immense amounts of fish and uprooting the vegetation and sediment within the trawl line. The trawl leaves the ocean floor practically bare and unable to sustain marine animals. Along with the loss of habitat, the stirring of sediment from trawling also results in an excess amount of algae in the water, an algal bloom. These blooms restrict sunlight from reaching the area below which makes it nearly impossible for creatures to survive in the ruins of the trawl (Hill 2015). The dangers of trawling aren’t unknown as the technique has been banned in several areas around the world, yet trawling still damages enormous amounts of ocean areas through its bomb-like consequences to ecosystems in the Pacific.
While at sea, it is common for fishing gear to break or become unusable. This gear is often irresponsibly discarded into the ocean where it poses many threats to ocean life. Every year, a staggering 640,000 tons of fishing gear is thrown into the world’s seas (Laville 2019). When gear is discarded, it continues its intended purpose of capturing animals by attracting and entangling them, often resulting in the animal’s death. This phenomenon is called ghost catching. As the amount of fishing gear waste compiles year by year throughout the world’s oceans, ghost catching is a rapidly growing problem to sea life. As reported in The Guardian, almost 300 deceased turtles were recently discovered in discarded fishing gear off the coast of Mexico and a pregnant whale was spotted trapped in ghost gear off the coast of Scotland (2019). Not only is the pollution of plastic fishing gear a direct problem to all sea life, but it also poses a danger to water quality and overall ocean health.
Our oceans are littered with all kinds of plastic, more specifically, microplastics. When plastic is thrown into the ocean, since most of it is not biodegradable, it is unable to decompose. Instead, plastics break into smaller and smaller pieces, eventually becoming microplastics (plastics <5mm long). Microplastics are severely harmful because they are easily mistaken for food by sea creatures and once ingested, they can clog their organs and starve the animals. Additionally, microplastics can both absorb and exude chemical pollutants, which intensify through the food chain and affect every level of ocean life (Caryl 2019). In the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a collection of waste in the middle of the Pacific Ocean with a larger surface area than the state of Texas, microplastics riddle the area making the water look like a “cloudy soup” to the human eye (2019). In a 2018 study, it was estimated that nearly half of the total mass of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is credited to discarded fishing nets (2019). Although the majority of all plastic in the ocean is not due to the fishing industry, the industry is still far from innocent. The Guardian reports that over 70% of the surface microplastics in the ocean today are from fishing related plastics, presumably fishing nets and other gear (Laville 2019). With the enormous amount of fishing done daily around the world, these numbers continue to climb and destroy our ocean’s ecosystems.
The long list of the negative externalities of overfishing has not gone unnoticed. Over the past couple of decades, continued activism has resulted in several new regulations to control or limit the harmful techniques and tendencies of fisheries. However, at sea where there is little to no enforcement, those regulations often go overlooked in the name of profits. The fishing industry obviously needs to be held accountable, but to do so, there must be advancements in fishing technology and regulation enforcement that both diminish the externalities of fishing and align with the business goals of fisheries.
The simple answer to the overfishing problem and the externalities that come with it is to limit global fish consumption, that is, to stop eating fish. This form of activism won’t solve the dangers mentioned above, but it will, however, decrease the demand for fish and in turn, lower the necessity for fisheries to capture at the volumes they do. The question that might follow is what to eat instead. If you turn to chicken or beef, you are contributing to yet another environmentally harmful industry, and sometimes, it’s not always realistic to stop eating meat altogether. The answer could be meat substitutes or lab-grown fish which are on the rise due to the public’s recent shift in opinion on meat industries. These, as we know, won’t solve all the problems of the fishing industry’s tendencies, but it would have an effect on demand which could be the necessary wake-up call for fisheries to look to the future and change their ways.
It is almost impossible to find a quick and easy solution to all the negative externalities of the fishing industry. The problems are diverse and unique, and there is no single solution that would fix them all. However, to at least diminish them is attainable and comes from scientific advancements and lowering the demand for fish. If both are achieved, the future of fishing would look much different. Fisheries would see a decrease in demand and profits and understand the importance of changing their ways; they would be incentivized to follow regulations, to develop and use environmentally friendly techniques, and limit their impact on the world’s oceans.
References
Caryl, Sue. 2019. “Great Pacific Garbage Patch.” National Geographic Society. Accessed March 12, 2022. https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/great-pacific-garbage-patch/.
Hill, Jacob. 2015. “Environmental Consequences of Fishing Practices.” EnvironmentalScience.org. Accessed March 12, 2022. https://www.environmentalscience.org/environmental-consequences-fishing-practices.
Laville, Sandra. 2019. “Dumped Fishing Gear Is Biggest Plastic Polluter in Ocean, Finds Report.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media. Accessed Match 12, 2022. https://www.theguardian.com/environment
Ritchie, Hannah, Max Roser. 2021. “Fish and Overfishing.” Our World in Data. Accessed March 11, 2022. https://ourworldindata.org/fish-and-overfishing#how-much-fish-do-people-eat.
World Bank. 2021. “Oceans, Fisheries and Coastal Economies.” World Bank. Accessed March 11, 2022. https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/oceans-fisheries-and-coastal-economies#1.
World Counts. 2022. “Time left to the end of seafood”. The World Counts. Accessed March 11, 2022. https://www.theworldcounts.com/challenges/planet-earth/oceans/overfishing-statistics/story.