Is there really a shortage of wild fish?!
Is there really a shortage of wild fish?
Farmed fish are fed steroids to produce plump, abnormally large specimens and other chemicals to fight the illnesses that affect trapped fish. It's much easier and far cheaper than chasing after them in their wild habitats.
Answers:
Hell yes ! Wild fish stocks worldwide are down (both freshwater and saltwater). The reasons are many but they all have a common root... us.
As for the notion that "farmed" fish is cheaper.. IT ISNT!!! thats why wild fish stocks are dropping!!!!!
Ok, lets hit the main points:
1. pollution... sewage is the big problem, women are using the pill, hormone replacements etc and when they urinate it all get sent to the sewage works to be treated...right? wrong! the fish stocks off the US east coast and around europe show a disproportionate imbalence in terms of gender and higher levels of sterility = less fish spawning = reduced fish stocks.
2. Climate change is altering the food chain... less krill means less food for shoals of small fish that the big fish (Tuna, albercore, cod etc) eat = less fish for us to eat.
3. Less fish in sea of particular species leads to "factory" fishing. This is a growing problem, as the best food fish grow smaller and fewer we cant catch enough to meet demand. Humanity , rather then be rational and wait a few years to let stocks recover, chooses to cheat and use vast nets strung across miles of ocean that suck up EVRYTHING. When you eat processed fish in fish cakes, fishfingers, fish pie ect its made up of all the little fish that are of no use normally but when you mince em up they taiste .. well just like processed fish. So we wipe out not only mature fish but the young, the shoels of otherfish the food species nead to eat and wipe out the eco-system over 30 square miles of ocean each time one of those darn factory ships passes over.
4. It costs a fortune to factory farm fish... you nead to farm thousands of fish to have a yearly "harvest" of only a few hundred... you buy them young...feed em up (feed costs money..a lot of money) over about 4-6 months then repeat the process, In the case of captive breading its even more expensive as you have to maintain a breading stock that you dont farm as well as the ones that you sell.
5. It costs next to nothing to hire a russian, spanish factory ship for a 6 month cruise that will net you a profit of over 60%, factory farming has a profit line of only about 30%...do the math.
I am a game fisherman in the UK, we nead to captive breed salmon to stock the rivers as the wild stocks are dwindling fast... the costs are huge.
So, unless the world can do without fish for 5 years its likely that we are going to have to anyway in 10.
For at least a couple of weeks after I go fishing, the local river has a tremendous shortage of fish.
Overfishing occurs all over the world which is leading people to search further afield in search of a catch.
At the same time Government are extending their Economic Zones, imposing quotas on their own fishermen. As a result of the conservation of their own resources the local fishermen are struggling to make ends meet and give up
in the last days............................. waters of the earth shall be pelluded.................does that ring a bell