Graphic content deliberately avoided. Please click here to view reality for fishes.
Fishing is destructive. There is so much industrialized and poorly regulated fishing each year that, unlike farmed land animals, there are no exact counts of the number of fishes caught each year. They are accounted for only by the weight of fishes caught. Based on weight, we consume between 970 billion large fish or 2.7 trillion small fish each year. [FAO]
87% of the world’s fisheries are exploited to maximum levels. Coral reefs are like the rainforest of the sea — they hold 25% of all marine life — but 50%+ are threatened by fishing. In the EU, the intensity of trawling in some protected areas is greater than in unprotected places.
Bycatch (or by-catch), in the fishing industry, is a fish or other marine species that is caught unintentionally while fishing for specific species or sizes of wildlife.
Fishing is wasteful. 35% of global fisheries production is wasted. For every 1 pound of shrimp, there is 5 pounds of bycatch. 85% of bycatch is discarded, and the rest is fed to farmed fish or land livestock. 300k+ cetaceans like whales, dolphins die in bycatch. 40%+ sea turtles die because of being caught as bycatch
46% of the observable Great Pacific Garbage Patch, which is three times the size of France, is made of leftover fishing nets from industrial fishing.
Sustainably caught fish. DNA tests show 28% of fish are mislabeled in USA, and 20% worldwide. 98% of bluefin tuna is mislabeled. But a certificate is not a guarantee for ethics either.
The popular Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) certification has never refused any company that has completed their certification process, regardless of their ethical practices, including companies that use trawlers, pollute plastic, and have bycatch. They have given their approval on endangered fish as well. WWF has criticized MSC multiple times, and Greenpeace rated it as a weak certification. Read the report on MSC by Bloom Association. 80% of its income comes from the companies that are licensed to use their logo, leading to potential conflict of interest. See a portion of this video to hear more about the controversy with MSC.
In spite of the extreme toll placed on the oceans and marine animals, life has a remarkable way of coming back if we can leave it alone. See video for more.
