Human Impact on the Environment : Fishing

Introduction & Issue

With the development of society, all kinds of human activities take place in the world. These human activities will promote economic and social development in the short term, but may cause irreversible harm to the environment and food chain for a long time, which may affect the long-term sustainable development of human beings. This report will discuss these humans or how they affect the environment.

Analysis and comparison of causes and consequences of issue

In those human activities, overfishing is the most serious impact on the food chain. WWF defines Overfishing as, Catching fish is not inherently bad for the ocean, except for when vessels catch fish faster than stocks can replenish, something called overfishing.

One of causes of overfishing is illegal catch and trade. Due to the lack of a system to track fish from catch to consumer, these illegal catches flow through an opaque supply chain. Experts estimate that illegal, unreported and unregulated fishnet offenders amount to $36.4 billion a year(WWF,n.d).

Overfishing affects the entire ecosystem. It can change the size of the remaining fish, how they reproduce and how fast they mature. When too much fish is taken out of the ocean, it creates imbalances that erode the food web and result in the loss of other important marine organisms, including vulnerable species such as turtles and corals.

Global Perspective

From the global data of eight aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems that had investigated, it was found that pollution from human activities could lead to a loss of biodiversity (Human Activity Threatens, July 20, 2006).

The total lack of fishing related surveillance in most parts of the world means that there is little or no monitoring of fishing fleet practices and activities. In international waters, there are few regulations on fishing practices. These reasons connive at the occurrence of overfishing all over the world.Overfishing destroy the biodiversity of living things. Predators such as tuna are always under tremendous pressure from humans. As the number of these predators decreases, the number of smaller predators they hunt will rapidly increase, putting pressure on species downstream in the food chain (How do human affect the ecosystem, N.d.). In 55 years, humans have successfully eliminated 90% of top marine predators such as sharks, bluefin tuna and mackerel (Croswell, February 2019). Over half a century, the number of overfished people worldwide has tripled, and one third of the world's assessed fisheries have exceeded their biological limits. (Overfishing Overview, N.d.). As a result, the damage caused by overfishing to the marine ecosystem in particular food chain is extremely serious. Millions of people are living by fishing, and billions of people are getting protein from fish. If the fish are depleted, millions of people will lose their jobs and many people will lack of protein.

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