Shocking Study Shows That 85 Percent Of Global Fish Stocks Are In Trouble–So Are We If This Continues.
In the Dr. Seuss book “The Lorax,” the title character, saddened by the destruction of all the truffula trees and the devastation covering the now-barren land “lifted himself away through a hole in the clouds.”
One wonders if the global elites have some similar escape plan in mind that they’re not telling the rest of us about. Because every day it seems like we get one step closer to the planetary point of no return.
Witness a disturbing study that shows that global fishing stocks are alarmingly depleted, overfished to the point where some scientists wonder if a total collapse of all currently caught commercial fish by 2048 is in the offing.
A 2012 UN Food and Agriculture Organization study which showed that 85 percent of global fish stocks are “overexploited, depleted, or recovering from depletion,” and another paper suggests that the populations of all large predator fish in the oceans have declined by 90 percent in just 50 years–the same timeframe in which modern industrial fishing has become widespread.
One scientist, Daniel Pauly of the University of British Columbia says the evidence suggests that the total fish catch for the planet peaked in the mid-1980s, and that it has been declining since.
It is widely agreed among most scientists studying the issue that the three primary causes of the crisis are overfishing, plastic pollution and what has coyly been termed “anthropogenic climate disruption,” or ACD.
Aka “We humans have jacked up this planet bigtime.”
But many scientists are coming around to acknowledging that overfishing is the biggest culprit in the mix. Consider that modern technology now allows fishing in virtually every part of every ocean on the planet. Plenty of scientific evidence exists to show that overfishing is taking wildlife from the ocean at rates that are too high for the animals to replace themselves. Even as early as the 1950s Atlantic cod and herring, along with California’s sardines, were overfished to the edge of extinction.
And even being aware of the problem and purporting to do something about it hasn’t really helped.
“The [fisheries] management isn’t working,” said Dr. Simon Boxall, an associate professor of oceanography with the University of Southampton, in an interview with Truthout. “And is in fact causing just as much destruction [as] if there was no management in the first place.”
So aside from pulling ourselves up out of this mess like the Lorax, what can we do? First of all, be informed. Do some research on overfishing, and share the information with friends and family. Shockingly few people have any idea how close to disaster the oceans really are.
Second, if you are going to eat fish, know that there are species and techniques and fisheries that are not as destructive as others. For instance, bluefin tuna, the kind that we eat in sushi, is effectively extinct. Not eating them might be a good place to start.
Also, here is an overview of “good fish guides” for a number of countries. Download and share! http://overfishing.org/pages/guide_to_good_fish.php