Food scientists and marketers are creating healthy, plant-based, imitation tuna, crab, and shrimp that look and taste like the real thing. Better yet, switching to faux seafood will help curb our reliance on an international fishing industry that has become an environmental and human-rights disaster.
FROM THE ARTICLE:
I swore off canned tuna last year, after reading The Outlaw Ocean, Ian Urbina’s wrenching account of human-rights abuses in the global fishing industry. For years, my list of morally acceptable seafoods had been narrowing as I learned about the environmental impacts of industrial fishing.
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THE OUTLAW OCEAN
There are few remaining frontiers on our planet. But perhaps the wildest, and least understood, are the world’s oceans: too big to police, and under no clear international authority, these immense regions of treacherous water play host to rampant criminality and exploitation.
Traffickers and smugglers, pirates and mercenaries, wreck thieves and repo men, vigilante conservationists and elusive poachers, sea bound abortion providers, clandestine oil-dumpers, shackled slaves and cast-adrift stowaways — drawing on five years of perilous and intrepid reporting, often hundreds of miles from shore, Ian Urbina introduces us to the inhabitants of this hidden world. Through their stories of astonishing courage and brutality, survival and tragedy, he uncovers a globe-spanning network of crime and exploitation that emanates from the fishing, oil and shipping industries, and on which the world’s economies rely.
Don’t like ads? Become a supporter and enjoy The Good Men Project ad freeBoth a gripping adventure story and a stunning exposé, this unique work of reportage brings fully into view for the first time the disturbing reality of a floating world that connects us all, a place where anyone can do anything because no one is watching.
To read more from the book, The Outlaw Ocean, read the articles and information at the amazing book site.
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Deep-sea fish in deep trouble: Scientists find nearly all deep-sea fisheries unsustainable.
Deep sea fishing is damaging ecosystems of deep sea fisheries which are more vulnerable to fishing and replenishes much slower. Recommend fishing in more shallow waters where energy, plants and fish are more likely to recover due to an increased energy cycle.
Deep-sea fisheries can be sustainable only where the fish population grows quickly and fisheries are small-scale and use gear that don’t destroy fish habitat,” said Dr. Norse. “With slow-growing fish, there’s economic incentive to kill them all and reinvest the money elsewhere to get a higher return-on-investment. Killing off life in the deep sea one place after another isn’t good for our oceans or economies. Boom-and-bust fisheries are more like mining than fishing, — Dr. Norse said.
The lawlessness of the high seas adds to overfishing in the deep. So do nations’ fisheries subsidies.
High seas trawlers receive some $162 million each year in government handouts, which amounts to 25% the value of the fleet’s catch, according to Dr. Rashid Sumaila, an author and fisheries economist at UBC.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/09/110907100014.htm
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