Different kinds of fishing and equipment

Read about it all here:

http://na.oceana.org/en/blog

This is a brilliant image from the above website:



They also mention Ted Danson’s book, “Oceana: Our Endangered Oceans and What We Can Do to Save Them.”


Extract of useful info from site mentioned above:

Dredges catch scallops and fish by dragging across the seafloor. They can crush corals, catchsea turtles, and dis­turb all kinds of seafloor life.

Purse seine nets catch schooling fish like tuna by en­circling the school with a wall of netting. They can cap­ture dolphins and other natural predators feeding on the school.

Trawl nets catch shrimp, cod, haddock, and other fish. Bottom trawls drag weighted nets across the seafloor, crushing corals or any other marine life in their path. Bot­tom trawls also discard more unwanted fish than almost any other form of fishing and are extremely destructive. Midwater trawls drag large nets through the water to catch pollock and other schooling fish, and when their nets are full, they may also drag on the bottom.

Gillnets are one of the most widely used methods in the world for catching salmon and sharks. When not closely tended, gillnets can entangle and drown sea turtles, sea­birds, and marine mammals. Some gillnets also snag large numbers of juvenile fish, which contributes to overfishing.

Longlines catch tuna and swordfish with miles of baited hooks that also capture sea turtles,sharks, and endan­gered sawfish. One longline can have thousands of hooks.

Read the full article on http://na.oceana.org/en/blog

Our oceans and overfishing

This a very good, easy to watch movie to watch. Its so interesting.

Its very important that people see it and understand what bad things are going on. If people dont know whats happening then they think it is not happening BUT it is!




What do your think about:

• Trawlers? These are big boats that bulldoze the bottom of the sea and damage everything just looking for what they want. Is it a terrible way to "fish" and should it be illegal.
• Thinking carefully what you buy and eat.
• people moving away from their appetite for prawns if this is causing a lot of problems.
• things like shark fin soup where the shark gets dumped back in the sea after having its fin hacked off and only the fin eaten in soup.
• Nets and stuff that trap loads of poor sea creatures and birds :(
• huge fishing vessels that take tons and tons of fish with sophisticated methods.
• those that discard most of their catch. Its already dead but they don't want it so they throw it away. Is this a waste?

Some ideas
Should everything should be used that is caught ?

Should there be limits on what is caught?

Should there be an organisation that sets offical standards for fishing like fair trade or organic produce i.e. ethics and regulates if the catch can be sold: where they fished, how they fished, how much they caught etc.

• That way the fishing industry will be forced to act in a good way. Less cruelty, staying in their own waters, being responsible for their nets