The Disappearence of Big Fish (no more tuna?)

[donsu]

http://www.counterpunch.com/ovetz04112006.html

Endangered Species in a Can?

-snip-

The harsh realization that catches of big fish-marlin, sharks, swordfish and tuna-are declining rapidly is beginning to sink in. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization considers about 75 percent of all fish fully exploited, over-exploited or depleted.

The crisis can be seen most extremely across the Pacific, the world's largest source of tuna, where catches are shrinking along with the average size of the fish. Today a 70 pound swordfish-which is too young to have even reproduced-is considered "a good sized fish" and can be legally landed in the US. Just a few short decades ago the same fish averaged 300-400 pounds and could be caught close to shore with a harpoon.

-snip-

Imagine the day when cans of tuna, a staple food source for millions of Americans, can no longer be found. According to the warning signs that day may already be here.

-snip-

The way out of this crisis is to catch less and pay more while staying out of critical areas of the ocean. It only seems fair that the countries with the resources should receive a far larger share of their $2 billion a year resource and still have some of the big fish around to attract far more lucrative game fishing tourism. The US has taken the right step by restricting longline fishing for tuna in the Eastern Pacific and banning it on the West Coast. Now it's time to put the pressure on other countries to do the same.

Otherwise we may start having to add these fish to the endangered species list.
(this is a rather hohum finish to a crises article)
----------------------------------------------


too late

the oceans are getting more acid (and the world won't even stop driving cars on Weds.)

plankton is dying. plankton is food for many fish. fish is food for humans - you know, the food chain

tick, tick, tick

[Sequoia]

1. Better buy some cans and stick under your bed.

[karlrschneider]

3. It's full under there!

Of duct tape and plastic!
:eyes:

[spag68]

4. tuna

along with your duct tape and plastic sheeting. I guess water should also be there but after a few weeks the tuna would give you mercury poisoning.

[karlrschneider]

2. When I was a kid, in the 50s my mom would tell us that the oceans

could feed the world forever. I suppose it was "conventional wisdom" back in those days but I wasn't so sure mom knew what she was talking about. It took a few years for me to find out there are huge expanses of ocean without any substantial populations of edible critters. And as you point out in the last para, with the ongoing population explosion, it's gonna get a lot worse before it gets better. ;-(

[theophilus]

6. No, your mom was right. The oceans COULD have fed us forever.

That hinged on earthlings not polluting their planet and raping it of its renewable resources. Also, if people had stopped squeezing out more than one or two kids and stabilized the earth's population at around three or four billion, it would have helped. If we could have learned to live together without killing each other with monotonous regularity......that would have helped, too. We made, and continue to make, very bad choices. The oceans are very, very ill and the land is not far behind. Whooooopeeeee! :eyes:

[spag68]

7. oceans

I think your mother was right. The oceans could feed the world, but what is needed are new techniques and finding out how to farm the ocean.

[Mrspeeker]

5. Its ok we can make High Fructose Corn Tuna

Which will have plenty of MSG to preserve your body when you die!

[Cassandra]

8. No one should be eating swordfish.

Too contaminated. Just saying.

[sinkingfeeling]

9. Weren't we told to buy tuna instead of chicken to ward off bird flu?

[DELUSIONAL]

10. Fishers on small islands in the Caribbean are saying that

the big fish have "gone away".

Last year they were catching big fish -- this year they are not catching big fish. These are the guys who go out in small boats or who fish from the shore.

Add to that the cost of fuel to go out fishing . .. .

[donsu]

11. yes, the price of fuel - guess the sails will be coming out of sea chests

nt