Industrial fishing wastes 10 million tons of fish every year while devastating the world’s ocean life

‘A decades-long review of fishing practices concluded that 10 percent of all the fish that are caught worldwide are thrown back into the ocean. This amounted to around 10 million tons of fish — which are either dead or dying — being discarded due to poor fishing practices and improper management. A group of 300 experts with Sea Around Us, an initiative by the University of British Columbia’s Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries and the University of Western Australia, said that this was equivalent to filling around 4,500 Olympic-sized swimming pools with fish every year.
Dirk Zeller, who was the lead author of the study, wrote on ScienceDaily.com, “In the current era of increasing food insecurity and human nutritional health concerns, these findings are important. The discarded fish could have been put to better use.”
Unmarketable fish are typically thrown back into the ocean. These fish are normally ones that are too small or part of an unwanted species. Sometimes, as with the Alaska pollock, fishermen only need a specific part of the fish (in this case, the roe). After they had harvested the intended part, the fish are discarded as well.’
Read more: Industrial fishing wastes 10 million tons of fish every year while devastating the world’s ocean life