Impacts
3
Big Idea:
-Ecosystem destruction
-Economic Impact
-Biodiversity lost
Overfishing is a huge Economic threat especially to communities where fishing is their main source of revenue and protein. Bycatch impacts the Economy as well as the Ecosystem, because only some is kept and some are thrown away, such as when fishing for Tuna, swordfish, sharks, turtles are thrown back. Because the predators are being killed jellyfish are thriving, however the deaths of other species in bycatch is impacting industries such as the shellfish industry by letting some species populations (like rays and kites) explode.
Shrimp fisheries have some of the worst bycatch. For every pound of shrimp, up to six pounds of bycatch is thrown away.
Gillnets, longlines, and bottom trawlers kill “Hundreds of thousands of sea turtles, seabirds and marine mammals, including whales, dolphins and porpoises, as bycatch. As many as 200,000 loggerhead sea turtles and 50,000 leatherback sea turtles are caught annually. Fishing also kills hundreds of thousands of seabirds”.
-52% of the fish stocks are totally
exploited
-20% are moderately exploited
-17% are overexploited
-7% are depleted
-1% is recovering from depletion
Did you know...?
In the mediterranean alone, 12 sharks species are extinct