Why Overfishing Is Bad

On the Atlantic Coast of the United States, fisherman travel to catch fish for money every day. They want to make a lot of money which means they want to catch a lot of fish. They think the most efficient way to catch a lot of fish is through bottom trawling. They think bottom trawling will be the most efficient because of the time it takes as well as the amount of fish they will catch. They drop the nets to the ocean floor and pick up everything that is in the net’s way (Destructive Fishing, n.d.). Those fishermen come home that day thinking they choose the most efficient way to catch fish, when in reality they have disrupted the marine life ecosystem tremendously. When the fisherman lifted the net up to the boat they grabbed what they needed, …show more content…
The official definition of overfishing is “the depletion of the stock of fish in a body of water through too much fishing” (Koster, 2007). That definition helps captures the idea of overfishing but it doesn’t help identify the underlying problems within overfishing. Overfishing is when people catch too many fish in a body of water where the ecosystem is disrupted leading to a decrease in the number of fish. In other words, overfishing is caused by non-sustainable uses of fishing that leads to extinction of certain species of fish as well as a disruption in the natural flow of the ecosystem (Koster, 2007). Overfishing is a problem we need to solve quick because it is affecting the balance of marine life as well as creating a food shortage for …show more content…
According to the Food and Agriculture organization, about 80% of the world’s fisheries are at a state of collapse and 90% of fish predator stocks are almost gone (Koster, 2007). These statistics tell us two things; one is certain species are staring to go extinct as well as entire ecosystems and two is that the consumers are in danger of losing a valuable food source. Overfishing is not just impacting one species of marine life; it is affecting a whole ecosystem. Marine life communities depend on natural interactions between predators and prey (D, 2007). For example, in the relationship of sharks and large fish, if sharks are being killed through overfishing they will be an overpopulated amount of large fish. This means that smaller fish, the prey of large fish, will also start to become extinct. Another example is if the large fish start to become extinct through overfishing, this means the food amount for sharks have decreased therefore causing a decrease in the shark