via World Ocean Review
JOAL, Senegal — Once upon a time, the seas teemed with mackerel, squid and sardines, and life was good. But now, on opposite sides of the globe, sun-creased fishermen lament as they reel in their nearly empty nets.
“Your net would be so full of fish, you could barely heave it onto the boat,” said Mamadou So, 52, a fisherman in Senegal, gesturing to the meager assortment of tiny fish flapping in his wooden canoe.
A world away in eastern China, Zhu Delong, 75, also shook his head as his net dredged up a disappointing array of pinkie-size shrimp and fledgling yellow croakers. “When I was a kid, you could cast a line out your back door and hook huge yellow croakers,” he said. “Now the sea is empty.”
Overfishing is depleting oceans across the globe, with 90 percent of the world’s fisheries fully exploited or facing collapse, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. From Russian king crab fishermen in the west Bering Sea to Mexican ships that poach red snapper off the coast of Florida, unsustainable fishing practices threaten the well-being of millions of people in the developing world who depend on the sea for income and food, experts say.
But China, with its enormous population, growing wealth to buy seafood and the world’s largest fleet of deep-sea fishing vessels, is having an outsize impact on the globe’s oceans.
Having depleted the seas close to home, Chinese fishermen are sailing farther to exploit the waters of other countries, their journeys often subsidized by a government more concerned with domestic unemployment and food security than the health of the world’s oceans and the countries that depend on them.
Increasingly, China’s growing armada of distant-water fishing vessels is heading to the waters of West Africa, drawn by corruption and weak enforcement by local governments. West Africa, experts say, now provides the vast majority of the fish caught by China’s distant-water fleet. And by some estimates, as many as two-thirds of those boats engage in fishing that contravenes international or national laws.
China’s distant-water fishing fleet has grown to nearly 2,600 vessels (the United States has fewer than one-tenth as many), with 400 boats coming into service between 2014 and 2016 alone. Most of the Chinese ships are so large that they scoop up as many fish in one week as Senegalese boats catch in a year, costing West African economies $2 billion a year, according to a new study published by the journal Frontiers in Marine Science.
The Latest on: Overfishing
- Can Lab-Grown Fish Fillets Fight Overfishing?on June 18, 2021 at 5:13 am
BlueNalu, a California biotech company at the forefront of cellular aquaculture, thinks growing fish flesh in the lab could lower demand for wild seafood.
- Guilty plea entered in overfishing caseon June 17, 2021 at 12:48 pm
The first of two Huron County residents recently charged with overfishing pleaded guilty during an initial court appearance Thursday. Bruce Warren, 53, of Pigeon, submitted a guilty plea in Huron ...
- Arctic grayling were once bountiful in Michigan waters. They were wiped out here around 1936 by overfishing, competition from non-native species, and the destruction of their ...on June 17, 2021 at 3:52 am
Like us on Facebook to see similar stories Please give an overall site rating: ...
- China's maritime fleet uses predatory fishing practices to feast on smaller countrieson June 16, 2021 at 4:00 am
China has spent decades overfishing its waters and decimating its sea life. Now, with nowhere left to go, the country's massive fishing fleet has pushed itself into international waters and at times ...
- Is the Answer to Overfishing… Algae?on June 16, 2021 at 3:48 am
Using technology that came out of the space program, scientists have developed a way to cut out the middle-fish from the food chain and harvest Omega-3s for fishmeal directly from the source: algae.
via Google News and Bing News
One Comment
gregdougall
The world’s population is now OVER 8,844,128,002 as of 31st December 2017 (midnight CET).
The only way to save the planet is to voluntarily have less children per family.