The Chinese get a lot of flak about over fishing and for fishing in other country's waters, which is true, but the Europeans eat far more fish per capita and over fish in other countries waters as well. It all needs to be cut back for the survival of the oceans.
Cargo ships from around the world are moving untracked in African waters, where the rise of a new fishing activity affects everything from local biodiversity to piracy
Hi Kaivey, that is a very fine article. Thanks for posting it. There is another aspect to this -- European and others' over-fishing in West Africa (and other parts of Africa) has been going on for decades. It is well known that the rise of piracy in the Indian Ocean off Somalia resulted from local peoples' reaction to large international trawlers and factory ships vacuuming up fish stocks, aided by the failed state conditions in that country.
ReplyDeleteAanother issue, that the BBC was reporting on around 2 decades ago already, is the link between the decline in West African (especially inshore) fisheries, and the resulting reduction in the availability of fish as a local and affordable food; this, in turn, has fueled a massive increase in consumption of bush meat, which has had devastating impacts on biodiversity inland, and may have contributed to some animal-to-human transmission of disease.