Disasters of over fishing

Back in 2021 I did a short post to alert readers to World Ocean Day and directed readers to a site run by Coty Perry detailing the horror show that is our overfished oceans. Over the last 18 months Coty has done a massive upgrade on his site – and renamed it anglers.com.  (Image above courtesy of anglers.com)

The site tells you everything that you could want to know about fishing for pleasure – ‘a website built by anglers for anglers. We’re your friends and family’. But they also have a very comprehensive section on commercial over fishing – when the breeding stock of an area becomes so depleted that the fish in the area cannot replenish themselves. To pick out just a few of the headline consequences:

• Species pushed to near extinction
• Destruction of fishing communities and tougher fishing for small fishing vessels.
• Increased algae in the water – increases the acidity in the world’s oceans, which negatively impacts not only the remaining fish, but also the reefs and plankton.
• Ghost fishing – abandoned man-made fishing gear. This left behind gear becomes a death trap for all marine life that swim through that area. It’s believed that an estimated 25,000 nets float throughout the Northeast Atlantic.
• By-catch (think dolphins caught in tuna nets) and waste – 20-30% of fish are lost  in the supply chain or because there are not enough freezing devices.
• Mystery Fish. Because of overfishing, there are a significant amount of fish at your local fish market that aren’t what they claim to be.

Coty goes on to talk in detail about:

• Subsidies (£72 billion a year paid almost entirely to large commercial operations, by far the worst offenders)
• Farmed fish and the horribly detrimental effects of fish farming.
• Which countries are overfishing
• And finally alternative approaches – such as the TURF scheme.
  Under TURF individual fishermen or fishing collectives are provided with long-term rights to fish in a specific area giving them a vested interest in fishing sustainably; they don’t want to overfish the area because to do so would be to kill the goose that laid the golden egg.

A really fascinating and illuminating – if shocking – read.

And then, if you a fisherman, you can go on to read about ‘The best crankbait rods for slinging cranks and pulling in hawgs’ or listen to pro angler John Cox tell you to forget forward-facing sonar as bass are still caught shallow….

Thanks Coty!!