REPORT URGES END TO UNSUSTAINABLE DEEP SEA FISHING

SCIENTISTS CALL FOR END TO
DEEP-SEA INDUSTRIAL FISHING

Washington (UPI) - Leading marine scientists from around the world are recommending an end to most commercial fishing in the deep sea, a U.S. marine conservation group says.  Arguing that deep-sea fisheries are unsustainable, they are recommending limiting fishing to more productive waters closer to consumers, a release from the Marine Conservation Biology Institute reported Wednesday.  The article, published in the scientific journal Marine Policy, describes fishing operations that have in recent decades targeted the unregulated high seas after stocks near shore were overfished.  Describing the open ocean as “more akin to a watery desert,” the scientists argue that vessels have targeted patches of productive areas sequentially, depleting the fish there and destroying deep-sea corals before moving on to new areas.  “The deep sea is the world’s worst place to catch fish,” marine ecologist Elliott Norse, the study’s lead author, said.  “Deep-sea fishes are especially vulnerable because they can’t repopulate quickly after being overfished.”  


“These things don’t come back.”  While deep sea operations account for less than 1 percent of the world’s seafood, fishing there - especially bottom trawling - causes profound, lasting damage to fishes and life on the seafloor, the experts say. “Instead of overfishing the Earth’s biggest but most vulnerable ecosystem, nations should recover fish populations and fish in more productive coastal waters,” Norse said, urging the rebuilding of fish populations in waters closer to ports and markets, places he said are far more conducive to sustainable fisheries.  “Deep-sea fishes are in deep trouble almost everywhere we look. Governments shouldn’t be wasting taxpayers’ money by keeping unsustainable fisheries afloat.”

Industrial fishing in the deep sea should be banned because it has depleted fish stocks that take longer to recover than other species, according to a paper by an international team of marine scientists.  The researchers said that many of the fish now caught there take longer than a human lifetime to mature, so industrial fishing of the world’s deep-sea waters makes this practice, with rare exceptions, unsustainable, and it must stop.  In this materialistic atmosphere everyone is exploiting each other and the environment, and this tendency is growing.  We should learn to share and protect.

WHAT DO THE VEDIC TEACHINGS TELL US?

Exploitation means that we are incurring a loan, and we have to repay it. We are bound-for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.  Exploiting civilization is suicidal; it must devour itself. It is living on a loan from nature. How proudly they show their heads raised high, but their welfare is all on loan from nature. It is extorted from nature, and the debt must be satisfied to the last cent. Pride and boasting are all negative. No positive contribution comes from this civilization of exploitation. Exploitation must stop. Exploitation means to extort things from others, and that must be repaid. It is a natural law. This civilization is worth nothing. We must enter into the land of dedication and everything will be preserved. Whatever contribution we shall make will be kept safe.

Śrīla Bhakti Raksaka Sridhara Mahārāja :
“Follow the Angels”
“The Path of Dedication”
“Enter the Land of Dedication”
http://bvml.org/SBRSM/FtA.html