MARINE MAGAZINE 2014 JUNE EDITION
Unfortunately, with the deep sea trawlers, shrimp are not the only animals that get caught in the trawler’s nets. As the nets drag along the bottom of the ocean they pick up anything in their path, including rocks, other fish, sea mammals, and turtles-also known as bycatch. Bycatch wasn't unheard of with the hand thrown nets, but the hand thrown nets where a manageable size so that fishers could quickly pull the nets up and quickly sort through their catch and throw back anything they don't need before it causes it any harm. With the trawlers, the drag along the sea bed sometimes for hours, causing whatever they catch to spend a lot of time shoved into the net and being forced against the ropes hurting the animals. And when the massive nets are finally lifted aboard, it takes so long to sort through the immense selection of fish that was caught, that not all the bycatch survives. According to the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO)16 of the bycatch cought in shrimp trawlers, on average only 85% of it is thrown back, meaning the remaining 15% of the bycatch is either dead, injured, or not thrown back for other reasons. In some areas such as in the Southeast Atlantic, its less than 50%15. These deep sea trawlers also wipe of a large portion of the sea bed, which is a home for hundreds of species in the ocean.
With the quickly decreasing quantity of shrimp in our oceans and rivers, and the increasing amount of shrimp and bycatch being caught by newer, more efficient trawlers. We really need to change our ways before we kill any more innocent fish and mammals that are accidentally caught as bycatch, and stop the overfishing of shrimp or one day, kids will have to find out what a shrimp looks like by looking at an old photo that includes the word “extinct” in the caption in their digital textbooks, and not by going to the beach and checking out the tide pools.
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