Something Fishy

?????????????? If you want to see where all the fish have gone a good starting place is at Puerto La Unión in El Salvador.

?????????????? That is the home base of a ship called ‘Monte Lucia’.?

?????????????? It is 300 feet long and about 30 feet wide.

?????????????? Here is an image of the ship :

?????????????? Here is an image of some of the nets that this small fishing trawler uses –

?????????????? The nets you see there measure about ? mile long.

?????????????? When a trawler is at sea they will travel to where the fish are located.

?????????????? The fish may be naturally in abundance in that area year round.? For some species they are abundant in some places in order to breed.

?????????????? In either case ships like this using nets like that run through the area and gather up all of them.

?????????????? Many times the ships have lists of fish types they will keep and others they will not keep.? Some of the fish they do not keep are called ‘Trash Fish’.

?????????????? It’s not because those fish are inedible – it’s just that the particular trawler is not seeking those to pack either onboard or when they get back to port.? They sell the fish they can get the most money for.? Often they will destroy many times more fish than they bring back to port.

?????????????? In addition, those nets, or nets similar to them, are weighted and then dragged along the bottom of the sea in order to create a curtain of netting from which nothing can escape.

?????????????? You may have read about or seen stories about how turtles and dolphins are being killed by these nets.? They cannot escape the wall of netting.? Along with that carnage there is also destruction along the sea bed.? All of the plants and animals that are there are torn up from the places where they live.? Most of them are killed immediately.? Others, slowly over times.

?????????????? Constant raking by ships like this remove all of the natural areas where fish and the plants and other creatures they feed on grow.

?????????????? Each time the ships go out they catch less and less.

?????????????? Because they catch less and less they are sent out more often and farther away.

?????????????? This ship, as mentioned, is operating from El Salvador.

?????????????? This is a small ship.

?????????????? Gigantic ships are sent out from the People’s Republic of China and range over the entire world.? There are more than 2,600 of those ships.

?????????????? They have so depleted the fisheries off West Africa that people from the coast and fishing villages, towns and cities that have existed peacefully for centuries are starving and the people sailing in dangerous boats to try and reach Europe.

?????????????? It is an open secret that those same fleets, along with uncontrolled and outdated American boats and ships have denuded the fisheries from Central Florida all the way to Boston.? The North Atlantic fishery is similarly being destroyed.

?????????????? The Government of the People’s Republic of China call the ships doing this their ‘Distant-Water Fishing Fleet’.

?????????????? No matter who is doing it the destruction is true and real.? It feeds the appetites of rich people and the not-so-rich in places like Las Vegas where shrimp, fresh fish, lobster and crab are freely available in the middle of the desert.? Such luxuries are available in all the rich countries in the world while in other countries the fish is processed into canned food and other dried food to feed the poor workers.

?????????????? It is unsustainable.