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Originally Posted by bluedragon  But what about fish? Especially ocean fish - I guess they are living a very natural life. |
I'd agree that they live a more natural life, especially the deeper ocean ones which aren't subjected to the pollution/contaminant problems. However, I find it disturbing that commercial fishing puts out a massive net that kills everything ensnared in it. Most measurements put the wasted dead around 90% but this site estimates it's 98% dead & discarded for every fish they can bring to market:
Fishing For Freedom
So in that sense, it's not sustainable for the ecosystem. Drag nets destroy reefs and underwater refuges. Commercial nets empty a mile of the ocean of fish at a time. The fish that aren't caught in the net are stressed and left with depleted food.
Whole ecosystems are shattered. Fish stocks can't recover. And with everyone advocating the health benefits of fish, the whole living ocean just can't keep up.
Salt-Water Fish Extinction Seen By 2048, Study By Ecologists, Economists Predicts Collapse of World Ocean Ecology - CBS News CANADIAN ATLANTIC FISHERIES COLLAPSE Researchers project collapse of seafood species Quote:
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Or even the salmons, as long as they are not grown in special aquariums, but fished in the rivers or in the breeding lakes.
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American salmon has been over-fished to the point where populations are entirely collapsing. 2008 marked a complete ban on west-coast salmon fishing from CA to Oregon:
Salmon fishing closed for California, Oregon CDNN :: Overhunting Caused Mass Marine Life Extinction
If you're buy salmon is either one of the few straggling groups left around the Canada or Alaska coast. Or it's farmed, which some are concerned have a higher contaminant (eg mercury) content than wild.
Some of the contaminants found in farmed salmon
I'd like you to consider this: every time you remove an entire species out of an ecosystem, the animals it kept in check and the animals that fed on it are now thrown way out of balance. For example, when fishery farms empty areas of the sea of tiny fish such as herring to feed to their captive farmed fish, they now starve the local larger fish out of a food source. In my area horseshoe crabs are being used up as a cheap bait source and depleted in massive numbers. The result was shorebirds were being pushed to endangered levels because they depend completely on the eggs horseshoe crabs lay in beach sand. Every population of seafood we take in large numbers as our own means some group of fish, sea life, or sea bird suffers.
So the question is how much can we empty the oceans of life before we say the small number of remaining fish aren't living much of a natural life?