A landmark study released by the University of California in 2008 revealed that only 4 percent of the world’s oceans remain untouched by human activity. That includes fishing, pollution, climate change and more. Ted Danson in his interview said that being a board member of Oceana, the world’s largest international organization dedicated to ocean conservation, he thinks fishing is the main reason behind ocean debacle.
Research by Dr. Daniel Pauly, one of world’s leading fisheries scientists and an Oceana board member, informed that global seafood catch peaked in the late 1980s and has been declining ever since — despite better and faster technology used to catch fish. According to the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization about 80 percent of seafood species are overexploited, fully exploited or recovering from depletion.
Dansen said that thee industrial way we fish for seafood is harming the marine habitats that all ocean life depends upon. Indiscriminate commercial fishing practices that include miles of driftnets, longlines with thousands of lethal hooks and bottom trawls are ruining ocean ecosystems by killing non-seafood species, including sea turtles and marine mammals. He added that increasing levels of carbon dioxide in our oceans will make it difficult for coral reefs, phytoplankton and shellfish to form their shells. This includes many animals that are the base of the marine food chain and therefore critical to the oceans’ overall health.
