The summer is getting closer each day, and so are the plans where to spend the summer holidays. At this time of year, lots of people from Croatia, Europe, and the whole world start the pursuit of the perfect destination. Every year, there are more tourists in Croatia, more registered overnight stays, and the summer season is more and more prolonged. This seemingly small country becomes great in the eyes of tourists, and to some even irreplaceable for its incredibly rich range of offers – from the Mediterranean to moist continental mid-latitude climate, from islands and hot summers to mountains and ancient forests, all of that on only 56.594 km2. Visiting Croatia gives people myriad possible ways of discovering the country, and endless possibilities of spending their spare time here.
The pearl of the Mediterranean, crystal clear sea, well-preserved nature, remote islands where as if the time has stopped, all of that attracts foreign and native people to the same extent. However, if you watch more carefully, stop and talk for a few moments with old local fishermen, if you scratch just a little bit beneath the surface, you will see that only few places still haven’t been marked by human action. In some places, those marks may be visible as trash, carried away only by the invincible force of time. Somewhere else, it may be the forests cut down and turned into industrial zones. And in some places, those marks are not that clear, because what was changed had never been thrown away or built by human hands, but taken away.
I remember when I first fell in love with the sea. I was too little to dive under the sea surface, or at least too afraid to open my eyes in the sea. One day, my parents gave me a diving mask, too big to fit my face, but by pressing it with all my strength, I could dive for a few seconds without getting the sea in my eyes. And so I did – I took a deep breath and dived and for a few moments, I could see the whole new world. It seemed to me as if the time has stopped; the most beautiful shade of blue I have ever seen, around me countless fish in more shapes and colours than I could imagine. With time passing, I testified fewer and fewer scenes similar to that one. Although the underwater world didn’t lose that beautiful colour, life in it became calmer. I wasn’t really aware of that until people started to talk about overfishing – not only in our sea, but in the world.
Overfishing emerges when vessels catch fish faster than stocks can replenish, and that problem has started occurring in almost every corner of our planet. We can still see days of a good catch, some countries still build their fortune through fishing, some parts of the world still don’t feel overfishing as one of their problems. But every day the number of people in the world is growing, and with it, the need for food supplies is increasing, too. In countries where fish is considered a luxury because of its valuable components, it has become one of the key ingredients recommended in healthy dishes. This trend contributes to the growth of demand for fish, and with it, fishing grows, too. The bigger the demand, the more intensive fishing; more intensive fishing leads to less fish in the seas, which leads to increased fishing effort.
According to OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), the fishing effort is a measure of the amount of fishing. Inputs included in the fishing activity can be the number of hours or days spent fishing, the number of hooks used (in long-line fishing), kilometres of nets used, etc. Fishing gear is more and more sophisticated, the vessels can travel longer and faster, therefore, fish which was until recently out of our reach can now be caught. Around 61% of all world’s fish stocks* are maximally hunted, and 29% of the world’s fish stocks are overfished. Those numbers cause nothing but heartache, and they will not stop growing unless people do something. Some of the fish species are at the edge of extinction because of overfishing. Some of the reasons for overfishing are illegal fishing, bad fisheries management, and too few marine protected areas (MPAs). Even if a certain country has a relatively large number of MPAs, we have to be aware that in many protected areas, measures of protection and prevention of poaching are not sufficient. All of that could change if people became aware of their actions and the importance of conscious fishing. It does not matter how large the number of protected areas is. It is the real efficiency of protecting endangered species and habitats that makes a difference.
Do we want our actions to be important only on a plain paper?
Or do we want them to make a real, undeniable difference?
*fish stock – the term fish stock usually refers to a particular fish population that is more or less isolated from other stocks of the same species.
This is the first text about overfishing on Ritosaurus. You can find the second part here: http://www.ritosaurus.com/posts/2048/
Literature
https://www.worldwildlife.org/threats/overfishing
https://stats.oecd.org/glossary/detail.asp?ID=994
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