Fishing and the Tragedy of the Commons

The Observer ran a special feature at the weekend about the global fishing crisis that results from over-fishing and the permanent reduction in fish stocks

Read “How the world’s oceans are running out of fish”

” Three-quarters of commercially caught species are over-exploited or exploited to their maximum….Industrial fishing is so inefficient that a third of the catch, some 32 million tonnes a year, is thrown away? For every ocean prawn you eat, fish weighing 10-20 times as much have been thrown overboard. These figures all come from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), which also claims that, of all the world’s natural resources, fish are being depleted the fastest. With even the most abundant commercial species, we eat smaller and smaller fish every year - we eat the babies before they can breed.”

Why can countries not see beyond the short term fix of fishing quotas (most of which are flagrantly ignored) and reach a new consensus on the way forward to make fresh water fishing more sustainable? The tragedy of the commons can be seen in many different guises but in fishing we have perhaps one of the most blatant examples.