There are not pleanty of fish in the sea!

This topic just breaks my heart.  Its something we all know and have heard before too many times.   How do we fix it?  Brown suggests stabilizing our climate and our population along side our continuing effort of parks and to protect species at risk.   Another student said this was not enough. 

It’s not, how can it be? How can we truly achieve this?  Brown says “Species of all kinds are threatened by habitat destruction”.  Most habitat destruction is by humans, but also “habitat alteration from rising temperatures, chemical pollution or induction of exotics can also decimate both plant and animal species” (1).  Brown also says “As the human population grows, the number of species we share the planet with shrinks”(1).  All human activity impacts wildlife from cutting down forests to build homes, and industry all the species in that area have been eradicated from insects, to birds, to fish, to trees.  We can argue its nature taking its course, but humans are the real problem. 

The Bonbo was mentioned, however, Brown also said “The threat to fish may be the greatest of all. The principle causes are overfishing, water pollution, and the excessive extraction of water from rivers and other freshwater ecosystems.“ (1).  I think we can all agree that those are not natural threats, the biggest threat to fish is the fishing industry!  And we will continue to fish from the top species down, according to an article from 2006, "The way we use the oceans is that we hope and assume there will always be another species to exploit after we've completely gone through the last one,"(2).  That attitude is why fisheries such as Canada’s Atlantic Cod collapsed.

This article said that historical records from coastal zones in North America, Europe and Australia show declining fish yields and declining species diversity of other kinds of seafood too (2). Areas with this biodiversity loss also tended to see more beach closures, more blooms of potentially harmful algae, and more coastal flooding (2).  So this shows that disappearing species and lack of biodiversity has impacts on the environment as well, not just in the ocean but in coastal areas. 

What needs to be done is proper management.  Parks are used for conserving endangered species on land.  What we need is more Marine Protected Areas to protect biodiversity. Black says  “you also have to have good management of marine parks and good management of fisheries” (2).   Marine Protected Areas refurbish biodiversity within the zone, and restores the populations of fish just outside the zone (2).

Protecting fish stocks demands the political will to act on scientific advice (2).  This is something that needs to become more politically sustainable. Since there are not plenty of fish in the sea!

I think that one of the biggest concerns in sustainability today is extinction, and our activities play a role in this.  I chose to bring up fisheries in this topic because Brown said the threat of extinction to fish is the greatest of all (1).  I feel that fish are often overlooked as a concern when it comes to disappearing species, mammals and land animals are often most publicized. I think that it is important to conserve fish species, as fish is one of the world’s greatest fish source, and a contributing part of the economy we need it to be sustainable.  Proper fisheries management and Marine Protected Areas are needed to conserve and protect the fish species.  However, this is not enough politicians need to listen to scientific advice, and promote fisheries management in efforts to conserve them.

 (1) Brown, L. Plan B 3.0 Mobilizing to Save Civilization. 2008. Earth Policy Institute. 

(2)   Black, R. ‘Only 50 years left' for sea fish. BBC News. November 2006. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/6108414.stm

Here is a cartoon to illustrate how MPAs work! 

This may be a cartoon, but has the right idea, I was gonna post another picture but it was to scientific this seemed more appropriate since my post was kind of dry!