The Effects of Overfishing
By: Richard Swigart
As with all environmental issues, we are beginning to see the effects of overfishing and empty nets in much more severe and worrying ways. Due to overfishing, people in poorer countries are hauling in smaller and smaller cathces. This is due to the fact that many European countries are movie their fishing locations to areas that dont have as strict of fishing laws as they have in their waters. The catch they are removing from poorer countries means in many cases, loss of food and income. Economically this harms not only people and villages, but often cities and even whole countries.4
Another major problem when it comes to overfishing is the environmental effets. Large ocean traulers collect large amounts of sea life that they do not want and end up discarding. They also destroy things like reefs and ships pollute the environment with leaking fluids and dead bycatch.2
Not only does overfishing poison and destroy our oceans, but it also severely affects biodiversity in populations of fish. Heavy fishing will change a populations genetic characteristics by selecting for or against certain genetically heritable traits like size at first sexual maturity.14 When you start to weaken a species biodiversity, you make it so that it can no longer effectively adapt to the changes in it's environment.
These are just a few of the more noticible changes seen due to overfishing. Some other effects include a growth in sea life that fish used to feed on. Without the populations of fish to keep prey in check, they can grow in abundance causing even more harm to ocean environments.
habitats.