Fishing Regulations

Fishing is a hobby enjoyed by thousands of people for thousands of years. Ever since humans have learned to fish it has become a hobby, sport, and business. In 2009 alone, Americans have consumed 4.8 billion pounds of seafood, and this number increases more and more each year. We already know that because of our over-population problem that fish is becoming more finite everyday. Luckily, we have many fishing regulations to help try to combat this problem.

In 1871 the United States government took the first step to trying to combat the dwindling fish population. The U.S. Comission on Fish and Fisheries was established with the goal to be, “dedicated to the protection, study, management, and restoration of fish.” While the U.S. Comission of
Their giant nets that used to yield large catches suddenly barely managed to scrounge up a few pounds of fish. The U.S Comission of Fish and Fisheries decided that they were going to pass a restriction called the days at sea act. The Comission realized that they were very late in passing the act, so they decided to do something drastic in order to help the fish population bounce back. At first, the days at sea act limited fishermen to only 23 days at sea per year. Sadly, because fishermen were now limited to such a short amount of time on the ocean, many of them lost their jobs, had to sell their boats, and went into serious debt. Even when the days at sea act increased the amount of days close to where it began, many fishermen were not able to return to the water because they had to sell all of their fishing equipment. While fishing regulations play a vital role in keeping our environmental impact down and keeping our fish population healthy, it also can impact peoples jobs, lives, and hobbies. While the fishing regulations are very good in the United States, most of the impact on the fish population comes from developing countries. In countries that are not as great as the United States economically, it would be a disaster to limit fishing, a job that employs so many people. While we can understand that people need these jobs, we also have to understand that if they continue to
While third world countries are often blamed for over fishing and hurting the environment, we often fail to realize that we may be encouraging the illegal activity. It is estimated the 90% of the fish that is sold in the United States has been imported from other countries. When we are buying fish from countries that are harming the environment, we are in turn contributing to the problem and are also promoting and funding the activity. While we can assume that some of the fish that we are buying from other countries was acquired illegally, it is impossible to tell which of it was caught legally so that we can pick what we want to buy. There is no system that allows us to track where fish is coming from, where it was caught, if it was caught in season, and if the fish is actually the type of fish the sellers are claiming it