Billion of people worldwide depend on fish and seafood for nutrition and income purposes; yet the fishing industry can have serious environmental repercussions.
Impacts may be direct or indirect; for instance through by-catch (capture of non-target species by drift nets and trawls), ghost fishing (discarded or lost gear), habitat degradation and damage (demersal trawling eroding seabeds and disrupting benthic ecosystems, for instance).
Overfishing
Human activities have a considerable effect on ocean populations, which rely on them for sustenance. If more fish are caught than can be replenished by nature, their populations decrease, potentially becoming extinct altogether; this has serious repercussions both for their ecosystem home as well as those who rely on it for their livelihoods.
Overfishing has the ability to have devastating repercussions for other marine organisms that inhabit a particular ecosystem. When one type of fish is overfished, its consumption by other marine life increases rapidly – this may result in the destruction of kelp forests and coral reefs.
Overfishing can have devastating repercussions for oceans and lakes. Pollution caused by fishing includes discarding unwanted catch back into the water as well as plastic or nylon “ghost” nets which become lost or abandoned and pose threats to marine life, including sea turtles.
Depletion of Resources
As fishing industries extract more fish from our oceans, their activities deplete populations of these species – which in turn diminishes food sources for marine wildlife and humans who rely on fish protein as an integral source.
Overfishing causes environmental problems by decimating keystone species – that are essential to ecosystem functioning such as algae-eating fish whose absence causes coral reefs to decline.
Other environmental impacts associated with fishing include waste production and habitat destruction. Trawling for bottom-dwelling species like shrimp can do significant damage to ocean floor. Fishing lines and buoys from fishing gear also become major sources of marine debris. To minimize their environmental impact, efforts are currently being made by fisheries industry to limit bycatch – such as using gear that limits bycatch, such as turtle excluder devices in shrimp trawls – while avoiding fishing sensitive habitats altogether.
Damage to Ecosystems
Fishery activity has long been linked to habitat loss and environmental degradation, including overfishing and other forms of environmental destruction. When large predator species such as sharks are removed from ecosystems they regulate, smaller creatures in their food chains become vulnerable. One such effect of fishing is known as bycatch; when unintended species like turtles, dolphins or sharks become caught with fishing gear while fishing; this often results in injuries or exposure causing death in these creatures returned back into the ocean where it usually dies out soon afterwards.
Other types of fishing-related environmental damage include the destruction of coral reefs and seagrass beds with destructive trawling, while abandoned fishing gear (commonly referred to as ghost fishing) continues catching marine species even after being abandoned.
Other harmful impacts of fishing include disrupting marine food webs and damaging seafloor habitats using explosive or cyanide methods to fish for capture, such as blast fishing with dynamite or using cyanide to stun fish for capture – these methods destroy seafloor habitats like coral and sponges which provide their livelihood.
Environmental Impacts
Millions of people worldwide depend on fish and seafood as both nutrition and income sources, yet poorly managed fisheries and illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing have devastating impacts on marine environments; depleting natural resources while disrupting ecosystems.
Fishing gear such as gill nets and bottom trawls can severely disrupt marine environments that support coral reefs and marine life, permanently altering these environments and rendering them inevitabile despite lifting any fishing bans.
Fisheries kill numerous marine creatures unintentionally each year as bycatch, because their lack of economic value or unwantedness makes them undesirable catches. This can have serious repercussions for marine food chains.
Marine mammals such as birds and seals can often become entangled in fishing gear and die; lost and abandoned fishing equipment may continue to trap marine life for extended periods, leading to ghost fishing practices on the ocean floor or becoming food sources for other marine life species.https://www.youtube.com/embed/vW37mnKM5So