Tuesday, April 18, 2017

Something Fish-y


I really love fish. I love swimming with them, I love learning about them, and most importantly, I love eating them. Everything about fish as a food is appealing to me—the taste, the texture, the variability in cuisines. Consequently, when Laura Garcia said that fish are about the worst animals to eat for ethical purposes, I was pretty upset. I don’t eat a ton at school, because fish and dining halls don’t mix well together, but I still felt affected by this statement.

I found this article to be hopeful. Fish Catch shares is a controversial topic, but in my opinion, from an ethical standpoint, I do think that they are largely beneficial. The idea behind catch shares is to increase the amount of time fisheries have to catch an allotted amount of fish. Proponents of this point out a human health benefit of having more fresh fish available for longer periods of time, whereas under the current system, most is caught in a limited amount of time and then frozen for the portion of the year when fresh fish is not available. Additionally, this could be beneficial for the ecosystem as fish catch in a brief period of time is more prone to devastate fish populations, which is a problem in this time of vast overfishing.


Critics of catch shares point to the fact that such management works largely in favor of large fisheries, rather than small companies. Nothing further is noted about the unethical practices of fishing (i.e. bycatch). In my opinion, the good that catch shares have the potential to do outweighs the harm that we are currently doing to our own health and the health of the ecosystem.

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