How do technology and the tragedy of the commons interact...?
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Guiding Question 14.2
How do technology and the tragedy of the commons interact to jeopardize global fisheries?
Why You Should Care
Industrial fishing techniques (larger ships, drift nets dragging the ocean bottom, and freezing the catch at sea) that began in the 1960s have decreased the oceans’ ability to replenish what we harvest. We are decreasing fish populations below replacement levels (which would be harvesting just the natural interest) and the remaining fish populations cannot reproduce fast enough to replace fishing losses (we are harvesting natural capital—Chapter 5).
This is another example of a tragedy of the commons (Chapter 1), where environmental choices are driven by difficult economic choices. For fishing, the costs forced fisherman to use more technology and harvest more in order to make a living. As fish populations grew smaller, the value of leaving cod was greater as the price of fish rose. Eventually, no one would leave fish behind for another fisherman to harvest, and the population crashed.
Test Your Vocabulary
Choose the correct term for each of the following definitions:
Term
Definition
The industry devoted to commercial fishing or the places where fish are caught, harvested, processed, and sold.
Annual catches fall below 10% of their historic high; stocks can no longer support a fishery.
Nontarget species that become trapped in fishing nets and are usually discarded. Some methods, like trawling, have very high bycatch levels, and discards often exceed the actual target species catch.
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Question 1 of 4
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Click on the part of the diagram that matches the term: bycatch.
Why is bottom trawling so damaging to other fish species?
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Why does the trawling net impact cod populations so much?
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7.
Which of the following describes bycatch?
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8.
Which of the following fishing technologies are banned by the United States?
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9.
Why can’t drift nets minimize bycatch?
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Bycatch occurs because the nets are wide and trawl long stretches of the bottom. All the species (fish, turtles, and dolphins) can be caught up by the net as it drags along the bottom. There is no way to selectively choose the species to harvest.
