Image Courtesty of Sea Shepherd Global
Consumer demand for fish and other marine creatures has far exceeded the output of marine populations. In this manner, humans have encouraged overfishing, which threatens to overthrow the natural balance of the ocean.
"In 2007, fish accounted for 15.7 percent of the global population's intake of animal protein and 6.1 percent of all protein consumed."
- Food and Agriculture Organization, World Review of Fisheries and Aquaculture, 2010
Image Courtesy of FoodSafety.gov
"One big issue for a lot of fish stocks is that there's just an incentive to overfish, and to catch fish that are not fully mature yet... the incentives are just to overfish that. And if you don't have a strong system in place for governance of the fish stocks then it's very easy for them to be depleted."
- Laura VanVoorhees, Lead International Relations Officer at the Bureau of International Labor Affairs, 2024 (Personal Interview)
"There's been total fishery collapses of herring et cetera in the Northern Atlantic... so definitely, unchecked fishing pressure can have very big impacts on population species level."
- Jamie Schubert, Marine Habitat Resource Specialist at NOAA, 2024 (Personal Interview)
Worsening the crisis is IUU (illegal, unreported, and unregulated) fishing.
"Globally, 1 to 5 fish are caught illegally – and even more in some regions like Africa, where 40% of fish are caught illegally, mainly by superpowers like China or the EU."
- Youenn Kerdavid, Media Specialist for Sea Shepherd Global, 2024 (Personal Interview)
The vessels participating in illegal activity typically fail to adhere to governing marine preservation laws.
"Poachers act with impunity, depleting marine sanctuaries, while illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing persists unchecked in the high seas, far from international authorities and public scrutiny."
- Kim Diaz, Sea Shepherd Outreach Coordinator and Leader of Sea Shepherd NYC, 2023 (Personal Interview)
Inside Look at Illegal Vessels. Scenes from the Twenty and Other Illegal Ships
Images Courtesy of Sea Shepherd Global
Collage Made Using PicCollage
"IUU fishing exacerbates global overfishing. IUU fishing has reached a critical juncture today, with many fish stocks already overexploited by legal fishing activities."
- Kim Diaz, Sea Shepherd Outreach Coordinator and Leader of Sea Shepherd NYC, 2023 (Personal Interview)
“Bycatch was all the other marine life caught while trying to catch a target species... studies estimate that up to 40% of all marine life caught gets thrown right back overboard as bycatch, and most of them die before they even hit the water.”
- Ali Tabrizi, Director of Seaspiracy, 2021
"I refer to bycatch as the invisible victims of the fishing industry. The industry will call bycatch “accidental take,” but there’s nothing accidental about bycatch. It’s factored into the economics of fishing."
- Captain Peter Hammarstedt, Director of Campaigns for Sea Shepherd, Seaspiracy, 2021
Bycatch is significantly more prevalent among illegal fishing vessels. Already acting outside of the law, they tend to downplay the severity of their practices, prioritizing profit over all other motives. However, bycatch occurs even in most legal settings:
1) Shark Being Caught as Bycatch. 2) Stingray and Other Species as Bycatch. 3) Sea Turtle Caught as Bycatch. Images Courtesy of Sea Shepherd Global
“In those fisheries where we have a better understanding of bycatch, the numbers can be alarming. And so to give you one example, in Iceland, in a one-month fishery, that fishery caught 269 harbor porpoises, something like 900 seals of four different species, and 5,000 seabirds. And that’s just one little fishery in one little part of Iceland. Taken across the world’s oceans, the amount of bycatch is huge.”
- Professor Callum Roberts, Marine Scientist and Author, Seaspiracy, 2021
“Within any fishery there is a certain level of bycatch... Some bycatch species that would be caught in a commercial shark fishery would be certain species of stingrays, you might get some grouper species, sea eels, sometimes, a variety of different things.”
-Peter Cooper, Branch Chief within the Office of Sustainable Fisheries at NOAA Fisheries, 2024 (Personal Interview)
Supertrawlers, boats leading massive nets that are dragged through the ocean, are one giant contributor to overfishing and bycatch. They are used both legally and illegally; regardless, the impacts remain dire.
“Trawling was by far the most destructive form of fishing. The largest trawl nets are so big they could swallow whole cathedrals or up to 13 jumbo jet planes. The nets drag heavy weights at the bottom, scarring the sea floor that were once abundant with life, leaving nothing but a barren wasteland behind. This was just like bulldozing pristine Amazonian rain forest, except it was much, much worse. Every year, approximately 25 million acres of forest are lost. This was equivalent to losing about 27 soccer fields per minute. However, bottom trawling wipes out an estimated 3.9 billion acres every year. This was equivalent to losing 4,316 soccer fields every single minute. Tallied up across the year, this was equivalent to wiping out the land area of Greenland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, the UK, Germany, France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Turkey, Iran, Thailand, and Australia combined.”
- Ali Tabrizi, Director of Seaspiracy, 2021
Negative Effects of Supertrawling. Video Courtesy of Sea Shepherd Global