Society Has Experienced Significant Technological

¶ … society has experienced significant technological progress through the years, people are still unable to acknowledge the harm they cause as a result of performing particular activities. It appears that factors such a high demand and a search for profits influences fishing companies to harvest fish in exaggerated amounts with no regard to the aftermath that their actions have on the environment. Consequences such as resource depletion, low biomass levels, and significantly low biological growth rates are just some of the environmental damages associated with overfishing. It is thus essential for the masses to get actively involved in denouncing the process and in performing as many actions as possible in an attempt to stop it.

As most of society concentrates on oil spills in an attempt to signal the fact that marine ecosystems are in danger, many people are not acquainted with the fact that one of the biggest threats of the marine environment as a whole is overfishing. "Our appetite for fish is exceeding the oceans' ecological limits with devastating impacts on marine ecosystems" (Overfishing). This action can have irreparable repercussions on oceans, as they are likely to be changed forever as a result of more and more fish species becoming extinct or experiencing rapid depletion.

Governments from around the world do not have a strict agenda regarding the fishing industry and regulations fail to provide the marine ecosystem with chance to regenerate in most cases. Fishing ships are equipped with tools that can identify schools of fish rapidly and it is thus extremely easy for individuals working them to catch large quantities of fish in a small amount of time. "Populations of top predators, a key indicator of ecosystem health, are disappearing at a frightening rate, and 90% of the large fish that many of us love to eat, such as tuna, swordfish, marlin, cod, halibut, skate, and flounder - have been fished out since large scale industrial fishing began in the 1950s" (Overfishing). The fact that people express particular interest in particular types of fish means that large fish are likely to be replaced by smaller fish that feed on plankton, especially considering that these fish gradually come to have less and less natural predators. Marine ecosystems are thus significantly altered as the number of predators slowly drops while plankton also drops as a result of more and more plankton-eating small fish having no one to prey on them.

The marine ecosystem no longer functions the same as a series of fish species become seriously affected by fishing. The general public thus needs to acknowledge the critical condition the marine ecosystem and to raise public awareness concerning the impending catastrophe that the world is about to experience.

In addition to the marine ecosystem being affected, overfishing is also responsible for generating economic and social problems throughout the world. "The cod fishery off Newfoundland, Canada collapsed in 1992, leading to the loss of some 40,000 jobs in the industry" (Overfishing). History is about to repeat itself when considering the North Sea and the Baltic Sea and tens of thousands of jobs are probable to be lost again as a result.