Industrial and commercial overfishing is one of the greatest problems the ocean faces currently. And this is why the U.S needs to enforce a national limit Industrial fishing trawlers nets to each have a surface area of 450 feet or under. This limit is large enough to not hurt local fisheries, as most of their nets fall under that limit or simply don’t have trawlers, but the area limit is also large enough to hurt commercial fishing companies that rob the ocean of its life. And as many states individually have restrictions that vary, creating a national limit on trawling nets makes it easier to track fishing companies activities. Once this goal is complete, this petition will move on to other types of nets and further shorten the trawling net limit. 

And here's the reason why limiting the area of fishing nets is important: Due to fish being thought as a renewable resource for centuries, many large-scale commercial fishing companies with new massively sized nets have pushed beyond what the ocean can handle while the majority of the public remains unaware. The largest trawler boat operating under the U.S flag, the Alaska Ocean kills 225 hundred tons of fish per day. This number is more than a local fishing boat can bring in in 10 years. This is unacceptable and devastating. The largest trawler nets allowed and used by the largest commercial boats in the U.S are massive, being 787 feet wide- a 747 jet could fit through that. And even though these nets are reserved for the largest corporate trawlers, many nets on the average commercial U.S fishing boats are still over 100 feet in area each, with many boats operating with multiple nets. And this is a massive problem.

Fish are not able to repopulate at the rate they are being taken from the ocean. And because of this fish populations as well as marine mammal populations are declining so rapidly that in 100 years expert Marine Biologists expect the ocean to contain nothing but jellyfish (as they are the only organisms that can reproduce quickly enough to counter the damage done to their populations by overfishing). The main cause of the loss of fish in the ocean is commercial overfishing. If commercial overfishing isn't limited now, the above prediction will come true and the ecosystem of the ocean, and consequentially the earth as a whole, will deteriorate. We will not take down this petition until we, Smaller Nets Happier Oceans, meet with U.S lawmakers to address this problem and legislation limiting the size of commercial fishing nets are limited across the country.

Visit the petition's website at https://smaller-nets-happier-oceans.my.canva.site/ocean-activism