Larger Predator Fish Rapidly Vanishing

Washington Post:

Over the past 100 years, some two-thirds of the large predator fish in the ocean have been caught and consumed by humans, and in the decades ahead the rest are likely to perish, too.

Read the whole story

Comments

[DavidMG]

04:26 PM on 02/24/2011

Read Barbara Kingsolver's brilliant novel "Prodigal Summer" for an appreciation (among other things) of the role of predators in nauture.

[Hypnos Rises]

03:42 PM on 02/24/2011

I the we have to write to our congress and senators to enforce fishing/hatchery laws.

[Phoebe917]

09:46 PM on 02/23/2011

i may be ignorant, but why can't this kind of fishing being regulated. i understand that we cannot regulate what other countries do, but we can do it here and hopefully with some of our allies. my son is a commercial fisherman/crabber on the chesapeake bay. there are VERY strict regualtions on how many, what size and the method used. you can have your license yanked and the DNR is very strict. last month, there were two huge poachers nets busted for rockfish. they never found the poachers, but what they had caught, not even edible or allowed to be cut loose. these fish were added to the quota and my son and his small company had to stop fishing after 3 days, because the quota was up for the month. and as for crabbing, it is even more strict. but one would be surprised at the amount of people who don't follow the rules and make it hard on the good ones. luckily my son is single and doesn't have a family to support, but many watermen do.

[Y2KCockroach]

02:55 AM on 02/24/2011

For a real education on how greed and politics have trumped science in the regulation of large fish species, read up on the history of the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas ("ICCAT"). ICCAT has long been co-opted by the countries that stand to gain the most from fishing tuna, and ICCAT's own scientists are all but dismissed in the course of setting quotas. Some countries attempted last year to gain CITES designation for tuna, but the Japanese and some tuna-fishing nations scotched the idea, through self interest and pursuit of short-term profits.

As a result, the Atlantic tuna fishery is steadily collapsing while the "regulators" do next to nothing about it.

A big problem is that large fish are migratory, and if we cannot get other nations to sign on to effective quotas and programs, backed with credible international management and enforcement, the commercial demise of the large predator fish is all but assured.

[Ballsin]

07:39 PM on 02/23/2011

So So Sad.Human beings are a cancer on this planet.

[rikster]

08:17 PM on 02/23/2011

I have often thought of the human species as a malignancy that is devouring its paradise for lack of a cohesive sense of discipline. there has to be some respect for our ecosystems. the eventual human die-off will not be from a meteor collision, but from humanities own greed and lust for environmental destruction.

[JScott]

10:52 AM on 02/24/2011

I remember seeing a play on PBS called 'Home' set way in the future where 8 people are crammed into a windowless/doorless 12x12 pod living there whole life there, never leaving it (there's no reason to, everywhere else is like that) the whole planet is this, One line that one of the actors sez is 'Let me tell you about an ancient species called fish'.

[kenholmz]

06:35 PM on 04/11/2011

I remember the play, "Home". It is true that the characters lived in pods underground. However, the play centers on a couple who are getting married. They have requested permission to spend time above ground. I don't remember what or even whether they were given an answer. Apparently, the survivors of earth had moved beneath ground some time ago yet much of the surface was still uninhabitable; at least this is what everyone was told. I hope to see the play again or at least to be able to read a copy of it.