Hi, I’m a student at Prahran high school, we were asked to make a petition on something that was important to us, and for a while now I have always thought that overfishing was horrible and that we should put a stop to it.

 

What is overfishing?

Overfishing is where companies mass fish certain species at a super high rate, at which the fish cannot reproduce,

Little by little the population of that species degrade until *poof* their gone, there have been around 15 cases of that happening, which seems like no big deal, but considering that overfishing only became a problem in 1992 that’s actually quite a lot.

 

When people overfish, like for say certain types of wild shrimp, they are caught by dragging a net the size of a football field at the bottom of the ocean floor to pick them up.

It is kind of Effective, but the cons are way worse than the pro’s

 

1.     They only catch around 5% shrimp!

2.    The other 95%!! Of sea life caught up in the net get thrown back DEAD.

3.    While throwing the net and running it against the bottom of the ocean floor, they damage and destroy all the coral and other natural habitats.

 

While on the topic of throwing back dead bodies, shark finning is a huge problem that classifies under overfishing.

Shark finning is a practice where they reel the sharks in and carve of the fin with a large knife.

All while their alive (Most the time), then chucking the dying, and finned shark, STILL ALIVE!!!

And how is that bad you say?

Well chucking them back alive is essentially killing them, but WAY more painful and slow, since they need their fin to swim, so without it they would just be floating around till they die.

 

 

 

What can we do to STOP overfishing?

 

-      Well firstly, the government needs to reduce the amount that fishermen and companies can fish wild/endangered fish.

 

-      I also think we must implement a sort of new licence to even fish, certain species at the max limit.

 

-      We should also BAN shark finning I know, I know it is a delicacy but it’s really horrible and we need to stop, or at the very LEAST reduce it.

 

-      Since certain fish that have been overfished for a while, I think we got to make the amount that we can fish those species lower.

 

 

So, if you want to help keep our fish alive and healthy, please sign this petition.