Raven Holt

For my choices for sustainable living discussion, I watched a documentary on sustainability, one on Fisheries. The documentary is Tipping Point: Fisheries on the Brink

This documentary showcased the problems of overfishing, and asked us how we can harvest from ocean fisheries in a sustainable way. Sustainable in this case means a method by which our (us humans) seafood desires can be met whilst not threatening the environment and the species as a whole. Thus issues such as our impact on the environment and overfishing are brought up a lot in this documentary.
Although the ocean is vast, it is still a delicate and fragile ecosystem. With this in mind, one of the parts of the documentary that stuck out to me most was a mentioning of "Dead zones" in the oceans around the world, 500 to be exact. These are areas where excess nitrates coming from our agricultural practices goes into the water. The thing with nitrates is that excessively high amounts of them can cause an acceleration in euthrophican, which causes the aquodic plant life to grow at a much faster rate. It can also drastically effect the types of plant and animal life that can live in the small streams of water, with some fish not being able to live a sustainable existence in the waters they reside in because of the abnormally large plant life. And on another note, drinking with nitrate above 10ppm is unsafe to consume for humans.

But 1 big issue this documentary I feel didn't spend enough time focusing on is the amount of ocean life going down as time goes by. The documentary mentions that in the past 30 years demand for fish consumption has risen 120%, and most of this demand was met through Aquaculture, which rose by 520% in that same period. The UN estimates that the global capture of wild caught fish has risen by 14%, and as a result, animal life in the ocean is declining. A quote that struck a cord with me on this topic was by Professor Daniel Pauly, from the University of British Columbia. In this documentary he says,
"It's actually not surprising that animal life in the ocean is declining, because we are throwing at it our whole industrial might. The biggest boat that we have, bigger than some warships. And this is appropriate because we are conducting a war on fish."
Far too much fishing boats are being sent after the dwindling amounts of fish out there. Too much money is being spent trying to capture too few fish, and the fish are suffering as a result. This contributes to overfishing.

The other primary issues that contribute to overfishing are problems with fishery practices and their regulations, illegal and/or undocumented fishing, disagreements between the fisheries and the 3rd party governmental regulators for data collection, and the practices of fish farming Aquaculture that catch more fish for the purpose of feed for their farmed fish rather than human consumption.