World Fisheries Day: Highlighting the importance of global fisheries
World Fisheries Day is celebrated every year on 21 November throughout the world by fishing communities.
The SA government reports that a recent United Nations study revealed that more than two-thirds of the world’s fisheries have been over fished or are fully harvested. It also stated that more than a third of the world’s fisheries are in a state of decline because of factors such as the loss of essential fish habitats, pollution, and global warming.
World Fisheries Day ultimately represents a chance to recognise the vast and sometimes underappreciated food source for millions of humans that is the sea.
World Fisheries Day: Highlighting some major problems
Fish forms an important part of the diets of people around the world, particularly those that live near rivers, coasts and other water bodies. A number of traditional societies and communities are rallied around the occupation of fishing.
This is why a majority of human settlements, whether small villages or mega cities, are situated in close proximity to water bodies. Besides the importance of water for survival and as a means of transportation, it is also an important source of fish and aquatic protein.
Overfishing and mechanisation
But this proximity has also lead to severe ocean and coastal pollution from run-off and from domestic and industrial acticities carried out near-by. This has led to depletion of fish stocks in the immediate vicinity, requiring fishermen to fish farther and farther away from their traditional grounds.
Besides, overfishing and mechanisation has also resulted in a crisis – fish sticks are being depleted through ‘factory’ vessels, bottom trawling, and other means of unsustainable fishing methods. It is sadi that if we don’t address these issues collectively, the crisis will deepen.
World Fisheries Day helps to highlight these problems, and moves towards finding solutions to the increasingly inter-connected problems we are facing, and in the longer term, to sustainable means of maintaining fish stocks.
Small-scale capture fisheries will continue to supply most of the fish consumed
The World Fish Center reports that small-scale capture fisheries will continue to supply most of the fish consumed in much of the developing world in the coming decades.
The majority of these fisheries are small-scale, operating in rivers, lakes, wetlands, coral reefs and estuaries in coastal seas, and provide livelihoods for millions of people.
More Facts on fisheries
- Small-scale fisheries (marine and inland) employ about 90 percent of those involved in fisheries.
- 65 percent of the reported catch from inland fisheries is from low-income food-deficit countries.
- Estimates vary, but from around 30 million to over 60 million people in the developing world are involved in inland fisheries; it is thought that about 50 percent are women.
- More than 25% of the world’s dietary protein is provided by fish.
- The human population consumes over 100 million tons of fish annually
- Over 200 million of Africa’s 1 billion people regularly consume fish and nearly half of this comes from inland fisheries.
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