Overfishing Doesn’t Just Hurt the Fish
Subsidies for fleets end up harming the food supply and the fishing industry itself.
Don’t go overboard.
Photographer: Jean-Sébastien Evrard/AFP/Getty Images
Overfishing threatens disaster not only for fish, oceans and the food supply, but for fishing itself. The industry’s prosperity declines right along with populations of tuna, shark, swordfish and other species. Yet all over the world it persists in taking more fish than nature can replace.
If this practice seems foolish, still more so are government efforts to encourage it. The largest fishing nations spend tens of billions of dollars annually to help fishing companies pay for fuel and new vessels. The U.S. government has been a leader of international efforts to end subsidies, but is now proposing a new one of its own: low-interest loans for fishing-boat construction. The National Marine Fisheries Service should abandon this disturbing reversal of policy.