Examine the Sustainability of ocean fishing

IB Geography HL 11

January 21, 2014

David Kim, Sunshine Kim, Armand Kaufmann

Examine the sustainability of ocean fishing

            The name of the film we watched in class was The End of the Line: The World Without Fish. This movie effectively indicates how humans are overexploiting the supply of fish in the ocean. In the early and mid 1900s, humans were only fishing for their needs. However, as technology developed, people got more into overfishing as the “bounties seemed endless”. The case of the cod fishing in Canada evidently shows this to be true. Fisherman in Canada were fishing only adequate amount of Cod, and it was also the most popular fish in the vicinity. But things started to get out of hand soon. Boats got bigger, and people learned to catch fish massively. As this was the case, the population of the Codfish got decimated very soon, and the Canadian government restricted overfishing of Cod in 1992. Consequently fisherman got frustrated, but that seemed to be the only method to reduce overfishing and sustain the population of Codfish in Canada. Another example, which shows that fish population may run out in not such a long time, is the Fish Farming. Fish farming uses wild fish to feed the farmed fish. However, doing this kills more than it produces and therefore is not a sustainable method of controlling the fish population. Small fish like anchovies would be ground up to be fed to other fish in the world. This method is very wasteful because tons of fish ended up getting wasted as they get fed to the bigger fish, which then we consume. Statistics also show that 5 kilograms of anchovies make up 1 kilogram of salmon, so this procedure can never be sustainable. Patricia suggests that we eat fish directly instead of using Fish Farming to lessen consuming more fish without the need to do so. In these adversities, one solution to the problems related with sustainability of fishing is setting up marine reserves. Marine reserves are areas in the oceans in which fishing is wholly banned. Setting a worldwide network of marine reserve to conserve the fish population would recover between 20 and 30% of the world’s ocean, and it would take about 12~14 billion dollars to do so. Even if the amount of money seems quite costly, this will not only create many new jobs for people but also help the ocean recuperate its environment.