News outlets have been hammered by cutbacks in recent years and oceans have been devastated by a wide range of stresses, including pollution, warming induced by climate change, ocean acidification (another insidious impact of greenhouse gas emissions), tourism in fragile marine environments and, perhaps most dramatically, overfishing.
So perhaps that old saying "Give a man a fish and heโll eat for a day, teach a man to fish and heโll eat the rest of his life" needs a corollary: Teach people how to manage fisheriesโand journalists how to cover themโand weโll continue to have a sustainable source of protein and delicious seafood for future generations to enjoy.
As it stands, it seems unlikely weโll be able to count on this resource in the future. About 25 percent of the worldโs fisheries are over-exploited, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, and another 52 percent are fully exploited. These estimates are based on officially reported figures from the seafood industry, which are notoriously unreliable, but the more targeted studiesโitโs now estimated that up to 90 percent of the worldโs big fish have been fished outโsuggest the situation may be even worse than it appears.
Read the complete story from The Columbia Journal Review.