Caroline Thompson

Adam Padgett

English 102

2.22.2017

Looking Deeper into Overfishing and Sustainable Alternatives:

An Annotated Bibliography

Inquiry: Are there effective, sustainable alternative methods being used or developed to deal with

the issue of overfishing?

Proposed Thesis: Overfishing has become an increasing issue in our world oceans and alternative

methods and regulation can help diminish this from becoming a larger issue.

Intro:

Over the years, overfishing has been becoming increasingly more harmful to our oceans as well

as fishing effort for humans has gone up. Overfishing is caused by humans removing too many

fish from the ocean at once without giving the population enough time to reproduce and grow in

numbers. Some other implications of overfishing include bycatch, species endangerment, and

animal entanglement. From this, fishing effort has increased which is the amount of effort

needed per fish capita. There have been efforts to decrease the depletion of these fish populations

whether it be regulations or new fishing techniques. However, are these methods effective? Are

there any methods that do create a healthy, sustainable fishing industry? Is it actual possible to

have an efficient fishing industry without having consequences pertaining to the environment

and the animals that inhabit it? These are just a few questions that I am looking for answers.
Many scientists and researchers have investigated this topic and have found several different

results.

Villasante, Sebastin, et al. "Overfishing and the Common Fisheries Policy: (Un)successful

Results from TAC Regulation?." Fish & Fisheries, vol. 12, no. 1, Mar. 2011, pp. 34-50.

Villasante reviews all aspects of the TAC (total allowable catch) system and the relationship it

has with fish exploitation. He discusses how TACs have many implications and serious

consequences including both marine biodiversity implications as well as economic implications

(36). These implications range from deteriorating biodiversity to the compliance of fisherman

and the effectiveness of the inspections that monitor the fisherman (36). Throughout his paper he

analyzes the effectiveness of TACs and displays numerous graphs with data showing the results

of TACs on different fish populations around the world oceans. His data was gathered from

1990-2008 allowing for a wide time range to see certain patterns under the TAC regulation. He

concludes his paper with the claim that TACs are not successful in maintaining and conserving

fish stocks as well as providing three pie charts to sum up the overall effectiveness of the TAC

in a visual (46). Villasante uses several other outside sources from other peer-reviewed articles to

help build on his claim and credibility. This article however is his criticism of the TAC, therefore

his paper focuses mostly on the failures of TAC and ineffectiveness. This can contribute to my

topic because it discusses the effectiveness of a certain regulation and the sustainability of this

alternative to make fishing less harmful to the environment.

Coggins, Lewis G., et al. "Effects of Cryptic Mortality and the Hidden Costs of Using Length

Limits in Fishery Management." Fish & Fisheries, vol. 8, no. 3, Sept. 2007, pp. 196-210.
Coggins discusses the effects of length regulations on fisheries and how it compares to the

overall fishing effort and efficiency of the industry. He research is relevant to my paper because

he discusses how effective management strategies to prevent overfishing are critical and

effective methods are exacting what I am searching for (197). He focuses mainly on how length

limitations can be sustainable but also detrimental to the fishing industry. Through a model

simulation, he was able to compare the length limit to the fish mortality which is displayed in

several graphs. The research resulted in the use of length limits failing to prevent growth and

recruitment overfishing (204). However, this can be slightly biased because it was does on a

simulation and was not data collected from in situ, which means it was gathered on site from

actual research. The data was influenced by the default numbers they put in to represent the

simulation of the real world. Although this data is not official data, it still shows a good

representation of how length limits also are not an effective, sustainable to prevent fishing

industries from harming the environments. This paper also comes from a credible source because

it is coming from a scientific community that is adding to the research done on this topic and

references several other peer-reviewed sources.

Byrd, Barbie L., et al. "Effects of Commercial Fishing Regulations on Stranding Rates of

Bottlenose Dolphin (Tursiops Truncatus)." Fishery Bulletin, vol. 106, no. 1, Jan. 2008,

pp. 72-81.

Byrd and his colleagues address the issue of bycatch due to fishing in this article. They use the

common bottlenose dolphin T. Truncatus as the victim of bycatch in their research. They discuss

how large of an affect certain fishing gear that may help one species can harm another species.

To give an idea of just how large of an issue this is they state how the annual bycatch mortality

from gill net entanglement in North Carolina from November 1995 through October 2000
confirmed to be high levels for the bottlenose dolphin (72). They gathered their data off the

coast of North Carolina and directly correlated the dolphin mortalities to the fishing effort for the

spiny dogfish. As the fishing effort decreased for the spiny dogfish, the dolphin entanglements

and deaths increased. They suggest that in order to stop harming the bottlenose dolphin and keep

fishing effort down for the spiny dogfish they need to implement emergency fishing regulations

such as gear modifications, time and area closures, or limited soak durations (79). This

information can be helpful and useful in my paper because it discusses how although certain

methods may decrease the fishing effort, it can still have negative effects on other species. This

peer-reviewed source is credible because they gathered their data on site and got real data from

the environment and fisheries. Data could be biased however, because fisherman are regulated to

report amount of bycatch and they might not provide an accurate reading. This is because the

whole controversy on overfishing and regulations affect their jobs and they prefer to keep the

fishing effort down, even if it means harming another species. The article provides several

graphs of data to display the negative effects of the fishing gear for spiny dogfish as well as the

positive effects for using it and decreasing fishing effort.

Groom, C. J. and D. K. Coughran. "Entanglements of Baleen Whales off the Coast of

Western Australia between 1982 and 2010: Patterns of Occurrence, Outcomes and

Management Responses." Pacific Conservation Biology, vol. 18, no. 3, Sept. 2012, pp.

203-214.

Groom and Coughran focus their research on the effects of fishing gear on baleen whales in

Western Australia. They discuss how the fisheries run straight through their migratory routes

making them susceptible to entanglement in the fishing gear. Their migratory routes along the

coast of WA means that they pass through waters which are used by a number of fisheries (204).
They gathered their data on site off the coast of Western Australia from the Department of

Environment and Conservation. Their data included reports of stranded, entangled or otherwise

injured cetaceans (204). They provide readable graphs to show the distribution of entanglements

in different whales off the coast. This information is relevant to my paper because it shows and

discusses a direct correlation between the fisheries and whale entanglement. They show this

through several graphs, one including a spike in entanglements during a specific time of year

when it was a specific fishing season. They looked at several factors accounting for all reasons

entanglements could occur and narrowed it down to the most common fishing gear encountered

by baleen whales is professional rock lobster gear, therefore taking a direct hit to the lobster

fisheries (210). This article is a peer-reviewed source for the scientific community that provides

several strong points towards how fishing negatively affects the environment and the animals

that inhabit the ocean.

Pauli, Gunter A. The Blue Economy. Taos, NM: Paradigm Publications, 2015. Ocean Prosperity

Roadmap: Fisheries and Beyond. Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, 2015. Web.

This paper focuses on a project that they call The Blue Economy which is defined in their

words as a sustainable ocean economy emerges when economic activity is in balance with the

long-term capacity of ocean ecosystems to support this activity and remain resilient and healthy

(7). They discuss all the benefits the ocean provide for us economically and how in order to

continue to gain from this environment we need to take care of it. It addresses how humans are

the issue in the decline of fish and increase of fishing effort. Research has proven that there has

been a shocking plunge in ocean health that has been directly linked to human activities (9).

The article provides a graph displaying the balance between economy and conservation and how

we can make it work. This is relevant to my paper because it shows a viewpoint on how the
fisheries industry can still be economically beneficial as well as conserving the environment. It

shows both sides in supporting why we need the fishing industry as well as why we need to

maintain the oceans health. This source deems credible to me because it is an honest proposal on

compromising between the oceans health and our economic gain. There may be bias, however it

is limited because they are supporting both sides in this argument and making a stand on how to

address both.

Plumer, Brad. "Just How Badly Are We Overfishing the Oceans?" The Washington Post. WP

Company, 29 Oct. 2013. Web. 26 Feb. 2017.

Plumer makes his claim in this article that overfishing is a controversial issue that some believe

has been fixed due to regulations, but others believe it is still getting worse. The article uses

major evidences from several scientific sources showing both sides of the issue. He also uses

graphs to display world fish stocks as well as increasing fishing effort over the years. He also

references the U.N.s Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries. All these references either

support that the fisheries are doing better or that they need more attention in order to stop the

issue from becoming worse. He discusses how in theory, the rest of the world could adopt

stricter measures to make their fisheries more sustainable, such as catch limits, careful marine

planning, and a crackdown on illicit fishing (Plumer). The article includes how overfishing is

affecting us, and touches on whether or not it is something we actually need to be worrying

about. The sources he uses throughout the paper are credible because the research was received

from marine scientists and fisheries experts from universities. The article is also credible because

it shows both sides of the argument, not just one biased view on whether or not overfishing is

actually an issue. Lastly, overall the Washington Post is a well-known news source that people

rely on for information. This is relevant to my topic because it shows the popular opinions on
this controversy from both sides. This allows me to not just focus on one side of the argument

and allows me to retain knowledge from all aspects of my topic to answer my proposed question.