The Future of Fish Reading Passage
The Future of Fish Reading Passage
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Since the very first commercial fishermen set their nets and hooks a thousand years ago, the ocean's surface has undergone a radical transformation. The intensity of fishing increased over time, but even in the nineteenth century, there was little need to limit fishing or establish protected areas because it was still believed, quite rightly, that the sea's abundant resources were largely beyond the reach of fishing. In the history of the oceans, the twentieth century saw an unprecedented increase in fishing intensity, and contemporary fishing techniques make it impossible for fish to hide. The only places to escape fishing today are those we intentionally create. Unfortunately, the area and level of protection offered by the sea lag far behind those of the land.
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We have continued to hold onto the idea that the sea is distinct from the land over the centuries as fishing and commerce have grown. We continue to believe that it should be a place where people and nations are free to come and go as they please, as well as a place that is open to our exploitation. We have perhaps been so hesitant to protect the sea because of this. On land, protected areas have multiplied as the population of people has increased. In our battle to preserve the diversity and richness of the wildlife and landscape, we have advanced more here than at the sea. Currently, only three-fifths of one per cent of the world's oceans are protected, compared to twelve per cent of the world's land. Even worse, some fishing is still permitted in the majority of marine protected areas. About one-fifth of the world's oceans are designated as areas that cannot be exploited in any way.
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Making marine reserves is seen by some as an admission of failure. Their reasoning holds that if we have managed our uses of the sea properly, reserves shouldn't be required. Many managers of fisheries still cling to the hope that one day their models will be successful and that politicians will take their advice. Give the strategy enough time, and they will succeed. How much time still remains? The last 50 years have seen this strategy tested and improved. There haven't been many victories to add to the managers' resumes, but there has been an increasing number of setbacks. The Common Fisheries Policy, the instrument used by the European Union to manage fisheries and aquaculture, is a prime example of the worst mistakes that can be made: flawed models, flawed advice, watered-down recommendations from government bureaucrats, and then the disregard of a large portion of this advice by politicians. When everything went wrong, as it had to, Europe sent its boats to other nations to buy fish for a fraction of what it was actually worth.
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Ocean wealth is being wasted by humans. Humanity will lose a crucial source of protein as well as other things if we don't escape this cycle of failure. Human life itself may be affected if natural ecosystem processes like water purification, nitrogen fixation, and carbon storage are disturbed. With some basic common sense management, we can greatly reduce the likelihood that this catastrophic error will occur. The core of the reform is the marine reserves. But if they are only occasionally put into practice, they won't be enough to support the shaky structure of the "rational fisheries management" that scientists had envisioned in the 1940s and 1950s. They must take centre stage as the primary tenet of everything we do in the oceans. When all else fails, reserves are a last resort, not a first resort.
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Today, we are only just realizing how important 'natural refuges' from fishing have been for preserving diverse and healthy marine ecosystems as well as fisheries. This does not imply that fish stocks can rebuild the fishing industry on their own; additional management strategies are needed for this. However, the final and most significant component of our package of fisheries management reforms relates to areas that are off-limits to fishing. They support and strengthen all of our other initiatives. Protection has its limits, though.
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What has died cannot be brought back by reserves. We will never be able to bring back globally extinct species, and reintroducing extinct animals locally may be necessary if pure dispersal from remaining populations is insufficient. Additionally, we are seeing that fishing can change marine ecosystems into different states where different species mixtures are dominant, as is the case with northern cod in Canada. Since the primary fishing targets have either disappeared or have greatly decreased in number, these species are frequently less desirable. Changes may also be difficult to undo, even with a complete ban on fishing. The fabled Greek king Ulysses is credited with discovering the Mediterranean, which is home to a plethora of monk seals, loggerhead turtles, and porpoises. Food webs have completely changed as a result of their disappearance due to hunting and overfishing, and recovery will likely be much more difficult than their destruction. Therefore, the sooner we take action to protect marine life, the more likely it is that we will be successful.
