#3: War On Fish

For every 10 tuna, sharks, and other large predatory fish that were in our oceans fifty to a hundred years ago, only 1 is left. Many scientists predict that in less than fifty years, all fished species will totally collapse. This is no longer a means of survival; it is a war of extermination. Not so long ago, farmers used natural processes to farm. The term "factory farmers" doesn't seem to fit our image of a father-son in a wooden boat fishing trip. Today, factory farming considers nature an obstacle to overcome.

A natural obstacle to overcome when using contemporary fishing methods is bycatch. Bycatch refers to the sea creatures that are "accidentally" caught by fishing nets (there's nothing accidental about hundreds of animals being consciously thrown back into the ocean alive.) Massive amounts of catches equals massive amounts of bycatch. For example, the shrimp business throws 80-90% of the sea animals, dead or dying, it captures overboard as bycatch. People tend not to think about this because they tend not to know about it. Foer notes that there might be a different reaction to eating animals if our food was labeled, letting us know how many animals were killed to make this one possible to eat.

If you look at the massive tuna industry, you would see that there are tons of species that are regularly killed for the sole purpose of providing people with tuna (which, even though irrelevant, is known to have dangerous amounts of mercury in it.) Among the many species that are regularly killed to make tuna an availability are the manta ray, devil ray, spotted skate, bignose shark, copper shark, Galapagos shark, sandbar shark, night shark, tiger shark, sand tiger shark, great white shark, hammerhead shark, spurdog fish, Cuban dogfish, bigeye thresher, mako, blue shark, wahoo, sailfish, bonito, king mackerel, Spanish mackerel, longbill spearfish, white marlin, swordfish, lancet fish, grey triggerfish, needlefish, pomfret, blue runner, black ruff, dolphin fish, bigeye ciagarfish, porcupine fish, rainbow runner, anchovy, grouper, flying fish, cod, common sea horse, Bermuda chub, opah, escolar, leerfish, tripletail, goosefish, monkfish, sunfish, Murray eel, pilotfish, black gemfish, stone bass, bluefish, cassava fish, red drum, great amberjack, yellowtail, sea bream, barracuda, puffer fish, loggerhead turtle, green turtle, leatherback turtle, hawksbill turtle, Kemp's ridley turtle, Atlantic yellow-nosed albatross, Audouin's gull, balearie shearwater, black-browed albatross, great black-backed gull, great shearwater, great-winged petrel, grey petrel, herring gull, laughing gull, northern royal albatross, shy albatross, sooty shearwater, southern fulmar, Yelkouan shearwater, yellow-legged gull, minke whale, sei whale, fin whale, dolphin, northern right whale, pilot whale, humpback whale, beaked whale, killer whale, harbor porpoise, sperm whale, striped dolphin, Atlantic spotted dolphin, spinner dolphin, bottlenose dolphin, and goose-beaked whale (just to name a few.)

Killing off so many members of so many species is not a healthy way to sustain an ecosystem. And now, I will prod at the morality of the contemporary fishing industry. Are a couple of tunas worth the lives of 145 species? This does not speak positively on behalf of the fishing industry. Like I said, people don't talk about it because people don't know about it.