National Geographic Tees Off on Commercial Fishing
- This topic has 16 replies, 8 voices, and was last updated Apr 3, 2007 at 7:15 pm by
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Hey guys –
I don’t know if you’ve got ahold of this month’s issue yet, for those that take it, but National Geographic has a three-part special report on the dismal state of world commercial fishing stocks and what humans have done to them.
The best description I ever read of the Tragedy of the Commons was in Jared Diamond’s “Collapse,” which
Whats worse is their answer is just to set up commercial fish farms in floating pens which simply spread diseases to the wild populations swimming by.
It gets harder and harder for me to buy seafood without feeling guilty. Tuna, Snapper, Grouper, Shrimp, and Oysters, are my weakness. There are many fish I won’t buy though.
Thus, everyone knows the village green can only support 10 cows, and everyone knows the village’s 20 cows will ruin the green for everyone, so it becomes a race to see who can take the fatted cows home first before the green is ruined.
And one villager becomes unsatisfied with the profit margin generated by two cows, so he buys twenty cows of his own to graze as much as possible before the other villagers bring their cows along.
One of the problems of fish farming is that it typically harms wild stocks – whether through disease-spreading cage farming like Carter mentioned, or through closed farms that invariably leak genetically weaker stock into wild runs. This decreases the viability of wild stocks, and decreases the numbers available for commercial fishing, resulting in further overfishing. It also leads to depressed prices paid to commercial fishermen, also encouraging overfishing. The downward spiral leads to decimated stocks.
Do I worry about tilapia farming? No. But with salmon, for example, fish farms are not an alternative to overfishing – they are destructive of the wild runs.
Check out http://www.mbayaq.org/cr/seafoodwatch.asp and click the link for Regional Seafood Guides.
I’m always very conflicted– I absolutely love fish & chips, but know what it does the the cod population. I love bluefin tuna, chilean seabass, skate, and many more. Unfortunately they can’t sustain the pressure they’re under. At least I can enjoy my cajun catfish!
yeah, but the loser in this deal is gonna be flopping around on the ground with a screwdriver in his neck.
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