World's Fish Being Depleted

Hoo Rah! Time for the old magic fingers of blogification to sound off on something again.

Sam and I came across a Red Lobster flyer in Sunday’s newspaper advertising “Endless Shrimp.” What the hey? How can a restaurant advertise endless shrimp? Won’t they run out? Won’t our country run out? What about all-you can eat crab - advertised by another restaurant? Won’t they run out of crab? Won’t our country run out of crab? Isn’t this kind of like the situation back in the “old days,” when we didn’t think we would ever run out of buffalo? Or what about more recent days - before the ‘70s - when we thought we would never run out of gas for our cars? Is it just me and Sam or isn’t there something fundamentally wrong with referring to anything as endless?

According to a report titled General situation of world fish stocks, generated by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), shrimp and prawn stocks in the Northeast Pacific Ocean off the shores of America are “ranging from fully exploited to depleted.” It should also come as no surprise that Chinook, and Coho salmon are “fully exploited to over exploited.” In the Atlantic Ocean off our eastern shores, Atlantic Cod and Haddock stocks are reported to be “depleted.” American Lobster stocks are “fully exploited to over exploited.” In most regions of the Atlantic Ocean almost all varieties of tuna are either over exploited or depleted. You can read this interesting and scary report by going to: http://www.fao.org/newsroom/common/ecg/1000505/en/stocks.pdf

After reading the report, it probably will make you want to run out and buy a hamburger, unless you’re vegan.

But here’s more good news. A November 2006 article by Charles Clover, Environment Editor of The Telegraph, says scientists are predicting the world's stocks of seafood will have collapsed by 2050 at present rates of destruction by fishing.

According to Clover’s article, a four-year study of 7,800 marine species around the world's ecosystems has concluded that the long-term trend is clear and predictable. By 2048, to be exact, catches of all the presently fished sea foods will have declined on average by more than 90 per cent since 1950.

Clover also quotes Dr Boris Worm, of Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia, as saying, "This is what is projected, not predicted, to happen. I am confident we will not go there because we will do something about it.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1533125/All-seafood-will-run-out-

STOP! Hold the phone. Has Dr. Boris been hiding her head in the sea sand? Doesn’t she realize that human greed and the American attitude of anything goes in the name of doing more business, will manage to live up to the predictions of depleted seafood stock? As long as we have advertisements offering “All you can eat,” we’re not going to reverse the depletion trend.

Dr Worm was optimistic in her report, saying that “there was evidence that wherever protective measures were taken, species recovered rapidly and could cope better with problems such as global warming. The catch per unit of effort — the standard scientific way of measuring fishing activity — goes up four-fold,” she said.

Er, right. It is also predicted that fishing farms - even if yahoo protestors leave the fishing farm people alone - probably will not make up for the depletions. Even destroying dams built long ago on our nation’s rivers isn’t going to reverse the depletion trend. There are too many people in the world and too little food.

Where does this Dr. Boris get off being so optimistic? Ain’t gonna’ happen! Three bags of poop on all-you-can-eat advertisements and depleting of our world’s seafood stocks.