Fishing and our Oceans
The oceans are so vast, and seem to have an endless variety of fish, but the oceans are in trouble. Factory trawler fishing fleets are going deeper and deeper into the oceans. They drop miles of netting and scoop up everything in their path. Coral, kelp, non-target fish, marine mammals,  endangered species – all of these get hoisted aboard the ships. About 20% is sorted out to sell; the rest is thrown back in the ocean dead. We are devastating our oceans with severe overfishing.
All 17 of the world’s major fishing estuaries are over-fished. Seven of the top ten marine fish species are fully exploited or over-exploited, and nearly 90% of all large predatory fish in the ocean are now gone, forcing nations to increasingly fish down food webs to meet seafood demands1. The 2008 State of the World Fisheries and Aquaculture released by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) concludes that 80% of all marine fish stocks are currently fully exploited, overexploited or depleted, including stocks of the 7 largest prey fisheries.
Endangered species are starving without enough to eat, and are caught in the fishing nets and killed. Dead baby fur seals, starved to death, can be found on the beaches at the Pribilof Islands’ fur seal rookery in Alaska's Bering Sea.
 The fur seals' food, pollock, is being vacuumed away by massive industrial fishing ships, and wildlife is starving as a result. It's not just the seals, endangered Steller sea lions are also being forced to spend more and more energy foraging to take in fewer calories, and their birth rates and youth survival rates have declined.
We have a choice in what we eat. We can live a healthy, long life without fish in our diet. Marine mammals cannot. They need fish to live, and we are stealing their food. They are also vulnerable to industry nets. Just as the dolphins are still killed in the tuna industry, sea turtles are killed in the millions by the shrimp industry’s nets.
Not only are we depleating the oceans of fish at an alarming rate for human consumption, half the world's fish catch is fed to livestock! In fact, more fish are consumed by U.S. livestock than by the entire human population of all the countries of Western Europe combined2.
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