Following on from the documentary SEASPIRACY that was recently released on Netflix, we were confronted with the damning reality of the impact the commercial fishing industry has had on the planet. Condemning the industry for being responsible for over 50% of the plastic in the ocean.
The film displayed that along with the by-catch of dolphins and whales killed globally each year, 30,000 sharks are killed every hour and 250,000 sea turtles are injured or killed in the U.S alone. Not to mention the non-target fish that are too small, seabirds and other animals caught up in the by-catch.
We discovered that the dolphin safe label we may have looked for when shopping for tuna is in fact nothing more than a marketing strategy with Earth Island Institute who issue the label being unable to guarantee the safety of dolphins and acknowledging that the observers on fishing boats are rarely present and that when they are they can be bribed.
A representative for Sea Shepherd, an organisation that holds direct action campaigns to protect marine wildlife, recalled catching one fishing vessel that was working for Dolphin Safe canned tuna, which had killed 45 dolphins to catch just 8 tuna fish.
The hard hitting truth is that there is no such thing as sustainable fishing when it comes to the commercial industry and the only way for us to protect the 300,000 dolphins, whales and porpoises killed globally each year, along with the major depletion of fish in the ocean is to eliminate fish from our diets completely.
Adding to this, the build up of microplastic pollution has contaminated the whole planet, from Arctic snow and mountain soils to many rivers and the deepest oceans. It is also being consumed and inhaled by people, and the health impacts are, as yet, unknown.
According to Harvard University, it is estimated that 14 million tonnes of micro-plastics are on the ocean floor.
These are defined at plastics less than 5mm. They enter the ocean either as microbeads and microfibres from clothing and personal care products or larger plastics items that are broken down slowly over time into smaller pieces.
With this, we learnt that discarded fishing nets and the leftovers of fishing gear make up 46% of plastic in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch alone and additionally, every single day, the fishing industry uses enough fishing line to wrap around the earth 500 times!
Along with the devastating results commercial fishing is having on our ecosystem, we learned that 93% of the world's CO2 is stored in the ocean, so protecting the ocean is in everyone's best interest.
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