The Crisis of Overfishing in Today’s Oceans
Since the beginning of the human race, the ocean has been a major source of food. People near the shores have been taking of advantage of the ocean’s rich and diverse source of nourishment for centuries, both as a source of food and a livelihood. However, since the dawn of the industrial age, humans have begun to take from the ocean more that it can give. As a result, the ocean can no longer provide the human race with the abundance that it once did. As technology rapidly advances, populations skyrocket, and global warming spreads havoc, the ocean’s biodiversity and once abundant supply of fish is dwindling, calling marine scientists and experts to race to find solutions that will restore the ocean …show more content…
In order to understand why overfishing has become such an issue, we must first understand the mentality behind it. It is a commonly held fact that the earth is covered in more than two-thirds water, the vast majority of this consists of oceans. For this reason, people assume that the ocean’s stores are infinite and that anything taken from it could not possibly make an impact. This mentality is called the “myth of superabundance”. This myth has directly or indirectly led to the threatening or extinction of a countless number of species, both marine and non-marine. An early example of the myth of superabundance damaging ecosystems is the peak of the whaling industry that occurred hundreds of years ago. In Overfishing: What Everyone Needs to Know, Ray and Ulrike Hilborn state that, “The thousand year history of commercial exploitation of whales by Europeans illustrates many aspects of overfishing”. Even a millennium ago, humans targeted certain whale species for their slow speed, easy catchability, and for their blubber. Soon, the world 's oceans had been nearly depleted of some whale species. And as technology began to advance, whaling methods, such as harpoons and steamboats, only became deadlier. “By the end of industrial whaling, the larger right, humpback, and blue whales were almost extinct and most other large whales were heavily depleted” (Hilborn …show more content…
Roberts states that, “Overtime, we gradually expanded the reach of fishing out across the world 's oceans until today. We take in nearly everywhere, to depths of 2000 perhaps 3000 meters in some cases, under the sea” Over the recent decades, technologies have become extremely advanced with the ability to draw in immense amounts of fish with methods such as bottom trawling, a method responsible for the extinction of numerous species. Roberts states that, “Sixty percent of those fish species have collapsed since the nineteen fifties. Some of them are in recovery, but most of them are not. If you look at the cumulative number of fish stocks that have collapsed and you project that into the future, it suggests that all of the fish stocks that we exploit today will have collapsed by 2050.” He then proceeded to offer examples of the decline of many species and others that are nearly gone such as: tuna, swordfish, and the leatherback turtle. “The leatherback, it 's the largest living reptile on the planet, it has a hundred-year evolutionary history, but nothing in that one hundred-million-year history prepared it for longline fishers”, says Roberts. Although, the leatherback turtle is not the
Since the beginning of the human race, the ocean has been a major source of food. People near the shores have been taking of advantage of the ocean’s rich and diverse source of nourishment for centuries, both as a source of food and a livelihood. However, since the dawn of the industrial age, humans have begun to take from the ocean more that it can give. As a result, the ocean can no longer provide the human race with the abundance that it once did. As technology rapidly advances, populations skyrocket, and global warming spreads havoc, the ocean’s biodiversity and once abundant supply of fish is dwindling, calling marine scientists and experts to race to find solutions that will restore the ocean …show more content…
In order to understand why overfishing has become such an issue, we must first understand the mentality behind it. It is a commonly held fact that the earth is covered in more than two-thirds water, the vast majority of this consists of oceans. For this reason, people assume that the ocean’s stores are infinite and that anything taken from it could not possibly make an impact. This mentality is called the “myth of superabundance”. This myth has directly or indirectly led to the threatening or extinction of a countless number of species, both marine and non-marine. An early example of the myth of superabundance damaging ecosystems is the peak of the whaling industry that occurred hundreds of years ago. In Overfishing: What Everyone Needs to Know, Ray and Ulrike Hilborn state that, “The thousand year history of commercial exploitation of whales by Europeans illustrates many aspects of overfishing”. Even a millennium ago, humans targeted certain whale species for their slow speed, easy catchability, and for their blubber. Soon, the world 's oceans had been nearly depleted of some whale species. And as technology began to advance, whaling methods, such as harpoons and steamboats, only became deadlier. “By the end of industrial whaling, the larger right, humpback, and blue whales were almost extinct and most other large whales were heavily depleted” (Hilborn …show more content…
Roberts states that, “Overtime, we gradually expanded the reach of fishing out across the world 's oceans until today. We take in nearly everywhere, to depths of 2000 perhaps 3000 meters in some cases, under the sea” Over the recent decades, technologies have become extremely advanced with the ability to draw in immense amounts of fish with methods such as bottom trawling, a method responsible for the extinction of numerous species. Roberts states that, “Sixty percent of those fish species have collapsed since the nineteen fifties. Some of them are in recovery, but most of them are not. If you look at the cumulative number of fish stocks that have collapsed and you project that into the future, it suggests that all of the fish stocks that we exploit today will have collapsed by 2050.” He then proceeded to offer examples of the decline of many species and others that are nearly gone such as: tuna, swordfish, and the leatherback turtle. “The leatherback, it 's the largest living reptile on the planet, it has a hundred-year evolutionary history, but nothing in that one hundred-million-year history prepared it for longline fishers”, says Roberts. Although, the leatherback turtle is not the