Why Overfishing Is Bad

Overfishing is, very simply, catching a large amount of fish so rapidly that the population cannot reproduce fast enough to replace those being caught. Signs of overfishing can go back as early as the 1600’s. In Medieval times a pair of fishing boats would drag a net between the two of them catching everything in its path. During the 1800’s, when humans needed blubber for oil lamps, they killed off a huge population of whales. In California, the herring, cod, and sardine population began to go extinct after being harvested for food in the 1900s. Today, modern technology has taken overfishing to extremes. We now can use tracking devices to detect where schools of fish are and are able to catch large quantities at one time. Our demand for fish is highly exceeding the supply that we have.
The fish in our oceans feed about one billion people daily for their main source of protein. Not only are we using these fish that are being caught as food, we are also using them as bait to catch other fish, using them to feed other livestock, or wasting them as a fertilizer. Farm fishing, one of the three …show more content…
Due to the overfishing of more predator fish than prey fish, it is making an over-abundance of the smaller marine species. Now, because of the high number of smaller fish, fishermen are beginning to fish deeper into the ocean and further down the line of the food chain to keep up with the demand for fish. This is called fishing down.
In addition to overfishing, indirect causes, such as pollution of our waters and climate change, also contribute to lower fish populations. Technology has increased our depletion of fish with its increase after 1950. One of these technologies is a net with an opening that stretches to the size of four football fields combined which have the capability to hold about five hundred tons of fish. Even though it may not entirely seem like it, overfishing and the effects it has had on our ecosystem can be