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Environmental Concerns
Commercial Fishing
If you eat sea animals, you are supporting the most environmentally
destructive of all meat industries. Today, huge fishing ships
stay out on the water for months, using technology such as
sonar tracking to hunt down schools of fish. Commercial fishing
boats indiscriminately take fish out of the sea, leaving ecological
devastation and the bodies of nontarget animals in their wake.
Fishing methods such as bottom
trawling and long-lining
have stripped millions of miles of ocean and pushed some marine
species to extinction. Eating fish supports the destruction
of the largest and most diverse ecosystem on earth.
Emptying Our Oceans
Aggressive fishing practices are emptying our oceans of life
at an alarming rate—13 of the world’s 17 fisheries
are depleted or in serious decline, and the other four are
fully exploited or overexploited.
One very common commercial fishing method, bottom
trawling, involves dragging nets larger than football
fields along thousands of miles of ocean floor. After scraping
the ground clear of coral, ocean plants, and all the fish
and marine animals in their path, trawlers leave huge gashes
in the ocean floor. Trawling and other aggressive commercial-fishing
practices are wiping out entire underwater ecosystems and
pushing our oceans to the brink of environmental collapse.
These practices make no distinction between target species
and bystanders. A trawler that’s trying to catch red
snapper, for example, will scoop up and kill or injure all
the other animals in its path. These dead and dying animals,
called “bycatch,” will be thrown back into the
ocean after the nets are pulled up and sorted. On some fishing
boats, as many as 90 percent of the animals caught in the
nets are bycatch. Scientists recently found that nearly 1,000 marine mammals—dolphins, whales, and porpoises—die each day after they are caught in fishing nets.
Commercial fishing has been linked to the dramatic decline
of an array of aquatic species worldwide. This means that
for every fish that you eat, many other marine animals, such
as sea turtles and dolphins, have died. According to Greenpeace,
this problem is so severe that undiscovered aquatic species
could be wiped out before we even realize that they exist!
Sea Turtles
 Commercial
fishing practices such as long-lining
are a major cause of death among many species, including the
endangered sea turtle. A recent study at Duke University found
that more than 250,000 loggerhead and 60,000 leatherback turtles
are caught by long-lines every year. Many turtles bite the
baited hooks, thinking they’re getting a free meal,
and slowly drown because they can’t reach the surface
to breathe. Others become tangled in the lines while they’re
swimming through the area. Turtles suffer horrible injuries
to their fins and faces when they’re hooked, and many
die from these injuries if they don’t drown first. Protection
groups such as the Sea
Turtle Restoration Project have organized a boycott of
long-lines as a way to protect these amazing animals, predicting
that if turtles continue to be caught at the same rate that
they are now, some species might not last more than 10 years.
You can help protect these endangered species by not eating
fish and encouraging everyone you know to do the same.
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Fish Flakes Trading Cards
"Take a Closer Look at Fish " Leaflet
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