Marine Fisheries - Research Paper Example

Marine Fisheries Introduction Theis and Tomkin suggest that overexploitation in marine fisheries has been made prone due to their physical nature. These are mainly due to the fact that the oceans can be accessible to anyone in possession of a boat that contains a gear (243). The effect that this usually creates is the reduction of the number of catch for the other boats and consequently the diminishing number of stock that need to produce in order to ensure there is enough stock to be able to sustain availability for the following year’s catch. Hence going by the economic theory, what this will result to if inefficient legal institutions fail to regulate marine excessive entries which will increase the total amount of the annual catch, which will eventually lead to the fish stock being inefficiently low (Theis and Tomkin, 243). Utilitarianism, which is a consequentialism paradigm case, regards pleasure (preference and/or desire) as being the world only intrinsic value. Pain, is considered as the world only intrinsic disvalue. Additionally, it is of the view that, what will produce balance of features that has pleasure over pain being greatest, will constitute the right actions. Hence with regards to marine fishing it should be established what constitute the right actions. Statement of the problem Due to marine fishing, the number of stock that is available for the fish breed to ensure their sustainability for the next years has always reduced. Therefore, there is need to ascertain whether marine fishing has reached to a point where it threatens the extinction of some species of marine fish and relate these to environmental ethical issues. Objective The main aim of the study is to ascertain the impact of marine fisheries and how it relates to some of the environmental ethical theories. The following research questions will assist in attaining these research objectives. Is the level of marine fisheries threatening the sustainability of some marine fish? How does these relate to the environmental ethical theories like utilitarianism? Literature review Any entity that is engaged in harvesting or rising of fish is referred to as a fishery. The terms that typically define a fishery are types of fish or species, individuals involved, the area of seabed or water, fishing method, the activities, purpose or the class of the boats. Fishers as well as fish are usually combined in the definition with the latter utilizing similar gear types to fish similar species. Aquatic culture, fish farming or capturing wild fish may be involved in a fishery. Fish stocks are continuously being reduced due to overfishing that has led to fish being taken beyond sustainable levels. (Jennings et al, 78) The various reasons that the fisheries are harvested include; for their recreational, commercial or subsistence value. They are either farmed or wild, fresh water or salt water. Examples include the Eastern Pacific tuna fishery, the Lofoten Islands cod fishery, China shrimp fish fisheries, or the Alaska Salmon fishery. The majority of the fisheries in the world are from the seas and oceans, and not inland waters. Methodology The method of data collection that was employed for this study was the use of secondary sources of data as well as primary sources of data. The primary source of data collection involved administering questionnaires to scholars and fishery management. The questionnaires aimed to ascertain the impact that overfishing has had to the environment and how it relates to some theories such as utilitarianism. For the secondary sources of data collection, it mainly involved research from information contained in books and articles from journals. This method of data collection was deemed efficient since the information from books and journals is relatively accurate as its meanings are not destroyed over time. Additionally, since the information was from different authors, it covered many different ideas that were compared. Further more books and journals were readily available and at a relatively cheap price. Data analysis From the data, it was apparent that the stocks of fish that were being caught were excessive. Some of the species that are threatened with extinction include the blue fin Tuna. Some of the fisheries that had abundant fish such as the Mediterranean sword fish and North Atlantic cod have been over fished to both biological and sometimes commercial exhaustion. Overfishing has been documented by scientists to be responsible for loss of biodiversity among marine and the collapse of fish stocks. Due to these, it has become impossible for open-ocean and costal ecosystems to provide a variety of ecosystem services such as water filtration, food provisioning and detoxification (Theis and Tomkin, 244). In fewer isolated cases, scholars have documented cases like the one of lobster gangs where informal management of the community ensured that the resource is not overexploited. However, such cases have been observed to be the exception as opposed to being the rule. Several kinds of regulations were employed in an early attempt to control overfishing. In some places boats were forbidden from fishing by utilizing the conventional longlines due to the reason that they result to a high by-catches. The high by-catches result in leatherback turtles being killed and getting endangered. Fishery management in some cases put a limit to the maximum number of the fish that the fishermen can catch in an entire fishery. The total allowable catch allows the fishermen to fish whenever and in whichever form they want till the maximum allowable limit is reached. From there on, it has to stop till the next season. The total allowable catch policies have been found to have their own shortcomings. The underlying problem of fishermen competing for fish is not solved by these policies. As a result, overcapitalization and perverse incentives have been witnessed in the market. These are due to fishermen boat crews racing to catch adequate amounts before the limit is attained. In extreme cases such as the Alaskan Halibut fishery, the race between the fish crews grew so extremely to a point that the season was reduced to only 24 hours a season, for the mad dash. Since fish is perishable, the clumping of high numbers of catch is not a desirable outcome. Theis and Tomkin suggest that in order to help manage fisheries, a tradable permit scheme idea be developed by resource economists (245). Cap and trade policies were established for fishing that employed the individual tradable quota schemes. With these policies, the total catch is still limited but the fishermen are additionally given permits that ensure them the right to share the catch. By this it allows the players in the fishery industry to freely sell the catch among each other. Some of the benefits that the individual tradable quota policies have had include, completely rationalizing the Alaskan halibut fishery. In New Zealand, after the individual tradable quota were established and implemented, it resulted in improvements of the biological stocks status. The scholars and fishery managers are coming up with ways in what needs to be done in order for good fishing management policies to be adopted worldwide. Conclusion From the data analysis, it has been evident that overfishing has led to excessive amounts of fish being caught. This has led to some species such as the Blue tuna to be threatened by extinction. Worldwide, the numbers of fish stocks have dropped; hence, some ecosystem services such as water filtration have been hampered. There have been some early efforts to control overfishing such as regulations on quotas. In other instances the total number of fish that can be caught in a particular year are regulated. The best example of this is the total allowable catch policy. This has a setback since fishermen always compete for fish and additionally the catch is perishable. The policy that has been found to exhibit positive results is the individual tradable quota. With this type of system, the maximum number of catch is still restricted but the fishermen have the right to trade fish between each other. Utilitarianism is of the view that the world’s only intrinsic value is pleasure, while pain is the only worlds intrinsic disvalue. Furthermore, it describes right choices as those that ensure the balance of pleasure over pain is greatest. For these cases, it has been established that overfishing has many disadvantages hence the best balance is regulation of fishing in order to protect them from depletion. Works cited Grafton, R Q. Handbook of Marine Fisheries Conservation and Management. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. Internet resource. Jennings, Simon, Michel J. Kaiser, and John D. Reynolds. Marine Fisheries Ecology. Oxford: Blackwell Science, 2001. Print. Theis, T. and Tomkin, J. (2012). Sustainability: A Comprehensive Foundation. Retrieved from https://www.earth.illinois.edu/UserFiles/Servers/Server_4102/File/documents/sustain_comp_found.pdf Read More