Word: fishelis
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...high seas, on any given day, hundreds of fishing vessels drag huge nets, big enough to snag a 747 jumbo jet, across the ocean bottom, vacuuming up 150-year-old fish, flattening ancient reefs and destroying everything else in their paths...
Only the biodiversity of tropical rainforests rivals that of the deep sea - our planet's largest wilderness - an aquatic wonderland that is now being systematically razed by what is likely the world's most environmentally destructive business. The fishing occurs mostly around the ocean's most unique topographical formations - submarine canyons, mid-oceanic ridges and tens of thousands of seamounts (most are extinct volcanoes) - which support a stunning profusion of endemic species, many of which are yet to be discovered. Trawlers reduce these habitats to rubble in minutes, undermining the viability of the very fish that brought the vessels there...
...problem is worsening, say experts, because more and more fishing vessels are heading out to the high seas - traditionally, a fishing free-for-all - to "top up" their load once they've hit the quota for their home country's fishing area, known as an exclusive economic zone. At the same time, demand keeps rising in wealthy countries for nutritious, and delicious, white-fish meat from species that have become increasingly hard to find closer to shore. "All fisheries are turning gradually into deep-sea fisheries because they have fished themselves out of the shallow waters," says Robert Steneck...
High-seas bottom fish are also far more fragile than their shallow-water cousins. They are slow-growing, long-lived species - the orange roughy, for instance, can live 150 years - which perversely encourages fishermen to take as much as they can, while supplies last. Some 20 years after New Zealand started its orange roughy industry in the 1970s (the name orange roughy was dreamed up to better market the slimehead fish, which was initially tossed overboard as trash fish), the ocean's stock of roughy was 75% depleted. Over the years, this "tragedy of the global commons" has resulted...
...toughest skin—a sort of Darwinian struggle for the loudest and vituperative.” Some professors cautioned against voting down a motion with a seemingly noncontroversial message. “All of this is what the French might call an exercise in drowning a fish,” French historian Stanley Hoffmann said. “It would be seen as very bizarre in the hinterlands that Harvard has rejected a perfectly sensible motion protecting free speech.” Several amendments were made to the proposal over the course of the meeting, with the most significant...