Illegal fishing is not only affect the environment but it technically harm the fishing eco system and human health as well. Due to the illegal fishing practices, fish populations are getting down below the margin. I have written down about how does illegal fishing affect the environment and how to reduce it. If you love fishing then you must know about it.
How Does illegal Fishing Affect The Environment
However, illegal fishing have a significant impact on the environment in quite a lot of ways:
- Overfishing: Illegal fishing can lead to overfishing in certain areas. In simple words, anglers illegally catch fishes before they get into their minimum size. This system effect on the entire ecosystem. Not only that, the other species that depends on the specific fishes affected by overfishing.
- Bycatch: Illegal fishing techniques often result in huge amounts of bycatch, which is the non-target type of fishes including rare and protected species. Bycatch can lead to the death or injury of these species, and it may reduce of their populations.
- Destruction of habitat: Some illegal fishing methods, such as dynamite or cyanide fishing, can cause physical harm to the aquatic environment. Dynamite fishing use of explosives to stun and kill the fishes, which can harm coral reefs and other territories. Cyanide fishing use a toxic chemical to stun and capture fish, which is extremely harm for fish and human as well.
- Disruption of food webs: Illegal fishing integrated food webs, as certain species removed from the ecosystem. This can lead to a domino effect; one species can influence the entire ecosystem and create further problems for the other species.
Overall, illegal fishing is a critical problem for the marine environment. It is important to stop the illegal fishing practices to protect the health of humans and environments as well.
Common Causes of Overfishing
The cause of overfishing is, when fish and species populations depleted at a faster rate than they can reproduce. It can happen due to numerous reasons, increasing demand for fish, and poor fisheries running practices. Nowadays, as the demand for fish and seafood products growing, it leads to overfishing in most areas.
Due to this cause, it have a major impact on the aquatic ecosystem. Fish populations are a necessity component of the food chain web, the whole ocean species are dependent on fish food chain. Additionally, the lack of operational fisheries practices, can contribute to overfishing.
List of Illegal Fishing Activities
Illegal fishing activities mention to any angling practices that violate the laws and regulations of local, national, or international. If anglers use illegal method or gear to fish in a regular or protected are it will be an illegal fishing activity. Besides, people who do not have any fishing license if they practice in those areas that will be prohibited as well.
Thus, activities by separate anglers, like small-scale angling operations, or large marketable fishing also are a part of illegal fishing.
Electrical Fishing
Electrical fishing is a fishing method that use electronic shocks to stun fish and make them easier to catch live or death. This method typically use a boat with specialized generator that produces required electric current to catch fishes. It produces electrodes are then placed in the water, which transmit the current through the water, stunning any fish that come into contact with it.
Electrical fishing generally for scientific research to study fish populations to monitor the health of aquatic ecosystems. It is beneficial for fishing operations, mainly in freshwater environments to catch large quantities of fish efficiently.
However, electrical fishing have negative impacts on fish populations as well as the environment. It can cause physical injury or death to small fishes that are not able to handle the high volt electrical shock. Moreover, electrical fishing can damage fish habitats.
Due to these potential negative impacts, electrical fishing heavily regulated in many countries. Therefore, it needs appropriate permits and training for fish any specific area.
Blast Fishing
Blast fishing, also known as dynamite fishing, is a procedure to use explosives to kill fishes. The explosives made from homemade bombs that thrown into the water area. Also, placed on specific are of seabed to kills or stuns the fish schools and making them easier to catch.
However, blast fishing have quite a few negative impacts on the marine environment. Firstly, the blast cause physical damage to coral reefs and other useful underwater habitats. Due to that, it takes periods or even centuries to recover.
Secondly, blast fishing is a cause to the overfishing of convinced fish populations. Usually, if an angler use dynamite to fish in a specific area, in that case all of the fish and species could be killed or harmed due to explosive. This can reduce the population of reserve fishes and the disruption of the entire marine ecosystem.
Thirdly, the explosives have negative impacts on human health and safety. Blast fishing is illegal in many countries due to the risk of human life, as well as the risks of management and transporting explosives.
Overall, blast fishing is a critical fishing method that is not suitable for general anglers or fishers. For some special situations, blast fishing could be uses with proper training and experts. Thus, all the anglers’ should avoid it.
Cyanide Fishing
Cyanide fishing is a method of capturing fishes by poisoning them. This process captures live fishes for the aquarium and other decorative purposes. The angler use sodium cyanide to stun the fishes for a moment and captures them alive.
However, use of cyanide in fishing is illegal in some countries. Cyanide does not only affect the ocean but it affects the environments as well. Anglers use cyanide to the coral or directly to the water, this way it harms the organic species and fish populations.
Why is it Important to Stop Illegal Fishing?
Stopping illegal fishing is essential for the environment and human body. Firstly, illegal fishing activities have important biological consequences, such as overfishing, critical marine habitats, and reduce the fish populations. These effects can lead a loss of biodiversity, due to this we will face a negative consequences for the entire marine ecosystem, including humans.
Secondly, illegal fishing also have economic consequences, as it technically injured the fishing eco system passively, so it expressively economic losses to legal fishing communities. It can also lead to one-sided competition, as illegal workers may engage in low-cost practices that definitely undercut the legal workers and down the fish prices.
Therefore, stopping illegal fishing is essential for protecting the environment. It requires a multi-faceted approach that involves improving angler’s and fisheries management. Thus, by increasing law enforcement efforts, and promoting international cooperation and collaboration it could be managed.
