Over-fishing has been Overlooked

Illustration by Erica Lee

At Columbia, we have at least five restaurants that serve sushi within a five-minute walking distance—two of them sit side by side across from our Barnes and Noble that sells books purporting the benefits of omega-3s in fish. But not many New Yorkers are aware that in the midst of Zagat-rated seafood restaurants, take-out sushi, or canned tuna for their beloved cats and dogs, their demand for fish has forced fishermen to put profits before long-term economic and environmental well-being. In fishing fleets as long as football fields, 200 billion pounds of seafood and 54 billion pounds of bycatch (“non-comercially valuable” marine life that are thrown away) are being ensnared in nets large enough to cover a jumbo jet. In this country and around the world, more and more fish are being taken out of the water faster than can be naturally replaced.

Unlike global warming and the visual evidence of melting icebergs and erratic weather, the problem of over-fishing isn’t immediately obvious to us unless we’ve actually gone out to sea and returned with more trash in our net than flopping fish. After reading a 2003 Nature article that found that the number of large predatory fish, like tuna, have decreased by 90 percent worldwide during the last 50 years, and an article in a 2006 Science, which stated that by 2048 the entire fish stock will collapse due to the loss of biodiversity from continued over-fishing and other environmental stresses, I was confused. Wasn’t global warming already an issue 40 years ago? Back then, the idea of warmer temperatures was rather appealing. Now we’re scrambling to find alternative energy resources and grabbing any eco-friendly products left on store shelves. If it took a former vice president and his Oscar-winning movie to bring global warming to the front of people’s agendas, I wonder what it will take for over-fishing to end. Maybe a sequel to Finding Nemo, aptly titled Killing Nemo?

The Magnuson-Stevens Act is the current law that sets 2011 as the year to end over-fishing. However, representatives in Washington such as Congressman Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) and Congressman Walter Jones (R-N.C.) are trying to find loopholes in the law and are attempting to extend this deadline to satisfy their special interests. The ocean belongs to everyone—not any one individual or group—and the public has the right to be actively engaged in the debate on how to best manage our nation’s resources. In order to stand up to that degree of power and money, we need numbers. In 2003, over 250,000 letters and petitions to stop over-fishing were sent within three months to the National Marine Fisheries Service (NOAA) while it was attempting to weaken the rules governing over-fishing. As a result, the director of this government regulation agency, Bill Hogarth, withdrew the proposal.

Now we need to take up the gauntlet once again to show how adamant we are about protecting our oceans. National campaigns such as “Conserve Our Ocean Legacy” are trying to ensure that the public is both educated in the issue of over-fishing and able to voice their opinions to their representatives. We can only set our oceans on the path to recovering levels of marine species through sustainable fishing—making sure that fish are not being taken out of the water faster than they can reproduce—and holding the Long John Silvers accountable when they violate scientifically set quotas.

Besides writing letters and signing petitions, we should eat with the ocean in mind. It takes three pounds of wild fish to raise one pound of farmed salmon, so opt for the striped bass instead of the salmon. Order the sushi with mackerel instead of the dish with tuna, which, besides containing mercury, is often caught by long-lining—a fishing technique that also traps threatened and endangered sea turtles, birds, and sharks.

In response to the scarce population of the sushi industry’s highly valued bluefin tuna, the NOAA director fittingly proposes that the International Commission stop bluefin tuna fishing in the Eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean Sea, but merely suggests that “we [Americans] may also need to consider conservation measures ... off our coast.” The U.S. has the most territorial oceans of any country in the world, so if we want other countries to change, this country has to re-examine how it’s treating its own waters. In order to savor the flavor of fish to come, we have to save them first.

The author is a Columbia College first-year. She is an eco-rep.