Fishing

          Just the thought of having tuna right now is enough to make me drool; and I’m not the only one. Millions of people consume seafood everyday, all over the world. For Island nations, fish is a staple. But what kind of effect does this consumption have on our oceans?

            Well think of it like this: if you’re eating a big fish, like a tuna, you are eating about 10 pounds worth of smaller fish, and if you’re eating 10 pounds of smaller fish, you’re eating 100 pounds of even smaller fish until we reach 1000 pounds of plankton. How can this be? Well, it’s the food chain. A tuna must eat the equivalent of its body weight every ten days. But there’s plenty of fish in the sea, right? Well we’re beginning to wonder. Every single year we catch more than 170 billion pounds of fish. That’s a lot of fish. (National Geographic October 2010).

            Not only is the depletion of the oceans a problem, but fights over fishing rights is a huge problem. China and Japan have been at each other’s throats for years over fishing rights. And they’re not the only ones. Taiwan and the Mediterranean have the same problem.

So is it worth it? Is tuna really that good, that we’ll fight over fishing waters and rapidly deplete the oceans? Well, maybe not, but it certainly is tasty.