Iceland: Fishing For A Compromise

UKPA is reporting that “in the absence of a fish quota deal with the European Union, Iceland and the Faroes declared they were stepping up their mackerel catch – absorbing the bulk of the available North Atlantic Stock”. When it comes to fishing, cooperation is essential. Management are given a quota which has to respect current predictions concerning the estimated amount of fish available. Fines can be awarded if a quota is breached as quotas are partially intended to preserve the fishing environment from activities like overfishing that leaves an area barren. Additional information on fishing quotas can be found in this article by howstuffworks which describes quotas as,

limits put in place in a wide range of areas including the following:

• Size of the fish you can keep
• Total number or pounds you can keep
• Total number of fish you can keep
• Time period that it’s legal to fish
• Fishing methods
• Fishing equipment

According to Shetland Marine News “the disagreement started after Faroe more than tripled its catch from a quota of 25,000 tonnes to 85,000 tonnes while Iceland increased its 2010 quota by 6,500 per cent from 2,000 to 130,000 tonnes” yet an article from The Press and Journal is reporting that “they also claim the EU has ignored evidence of a substantial increase in mackerel in their waters.” Regardless of reason, overfishing has the potential to devastate future harvests. Ultimately, caution is best exercised in this scenario until a concrete decision is finalized.

 

The Fact Some Find Comfort In Ignoring

Image by J.Otavia Flickr

Next time you visit a fish market and pass a fisherman selling his or her catch, be sure to ask them if they have seen pollutants where they fish. According to the Naked Scientists, a group of scientists in the United Kingdom from various fields with various podcasts on the world of science, “a huge proportion of the CO2 that we’re putting into the atmosphere ends up dissolved in the oceans, making them more acidic.” However CO2 is not the only threat to this ecosystem, plastics, or rather the remnants of plastic bags and other consumer goods, make their way into oceans around the world. As a matter of fact, according to Kimberly Amaral, author of “Plastics in Our Oceans“, “Plastic is durable and strong–precisely the qualities that make it so dangerous if it reaches the ocean.”

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Yet can plastics be found excessively in our oceans? Absolutely. As a matter of fact due to the way the currents move accordingly with the Gulf Stream there is an island of plastic somewhere in the Pacific Ocean and according to the Popular Science blog that mound of trash, “that’s twice the size of Texas is floating somewhere between San Francisco and Hawaii.” Futhermore the article states that it the debris is , “80 percent plastic, and weighs in at 3.5 million tons”, not to mention it’s growing rate as the current adds more debris to the buildup. So now that we know this is happening, the solution lies at the end of a complex path. With som many other issues facing many of the countries nearby, specifically the United States, some can argue that this heap will simply be added to the rest to be tackled some other day. At the end of the day it comes down to priority, but how long can we delay massive cleanups of our ocean, and how long do the species that live in those very waters have to live, those and many other questions to be answered later on.