Sustainable Fishing | Social Studies

Hi everyone! Welcome to another post, today for social studies we learned about sustainable fishing, what it is, the impacts of overfishing/commercial fishing, and what overfishing/commercial fishing is doing to the ocean's food chain. We then had to answer a question about it.

Credit: Iberdrola

How is commercial fishing a threat to dolphins and birdlife [by-catch]?

Over the years commercial fishing has become a very large industry. It is has provided countries around the world with delicious seafood and profits. But, commercial fishing has also been a huge threat to the ocean, sea animals and food chains around the ocean. Problems such as overfishing and bycatch, which harm the ocean's animal populations and damage many ecosystems within the ocean. 

Overfishing is the act of fishing at a relatively quick rate where a species do not have time to develop more, which affects the population of that certain species, creating an underpopulated area. Bycatch is the act of catching a marine species unintentionally while catching other animals such as crabs or tuna. 

In a segment of Seaspiracy, it mentioned how dolphins are being bycaught by fisheries who are aiming to catch tuna. Most of the time the dolphin that was caught is thrown back to the ocean, they might even dead by the time they are thrown in. 

Birdlife is also decreasing due to the amount of fish being taken out by the ocean, this is because ocean birds feed on the fish that is being chased to the surface by other large predators. So when we overfish areas where birds feed, they won't have any food, they will then starve, after that, they will then die. 

Given these points, commercial fishing is a huge threat to many marine sea life and ecosystems around the oceans. This is because of the dangerous fishing techniques done by many fisheries that are either legal or illegal, which can be a threat to the marine life population.