Want to know about conservation and management of ocean resources?

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yes, sounds intresting 50% 2 Votes

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• avoid oil spills n pollution by factory n shipping wastes 0% 0 Votes
• The ocean is one of Earth%26#039;s most valuable natural resources. It provides food in the form of fish and shellfish—about 200 billion pounds are caught each year. It%26#039;s used for transportation—both travel and shipping. It provides a treasured source of recreation for humans. It is mined for minerals (salt, sand, gravel, and some manganese, copper, nickel, iron and cobalt can be found in the deep sea) and drilled for crude oil.
  
  The ocean plays a critical role in removing carbon from the atmosphere and providing oxygen. It regulates Earth%26#039;s climate. The ocean is an increasingly important source of biomedical organisms with enormous potential for fighting disease. These are just a few examples of the importance of the ocean to life on land. Explore them in greater detail to understand why we must keep the ocean healthy for future generations....
  
  Fishing Facts
  
  The oceans have been fished for thousands of years and are an integral part of human society. Fish have been important to the world economy for all of these years, starting with the Viking trade of cod and then continuing with fisheries like those found in Lofoten, Europe, Italy, Portugal, Spain and India. Fisheries of today provide about 16% of the total world’s protein with higher percentages occurring in developing nations. Fisheries are still enormously important to the economy and well being of communities.
  
  The word fisheries refers to all of the fishing activities in the ocean whether they are to obtain fish for the commercial fishing industry, for recreation, to obtain ornamental fish or fish oil. Fishing activities resulting in fish not used for consumption are called industrial fisheries. Fisheries are usually designated to certain ecoregions like the salmon fishery in Alaska, the Eastern Pacific tuna fishery or the Lofoten island cod fishery. Due to the relative abundance of fish on the continental shelf, fisheries are usually marine and not freshwater.
  
  Although a world total of 86 million tons of fish were captured in 2000, China’s fisheries were the most productive, capturing a whopping one third of the total. Other countries producing the most fish were Peru, Japan, the United States, Chile, Indonesia, Russia, India, Thailand, Norway and Iceland- with Peru being the most and Iceland being the least. The number of fish caught varies with the years but appears to have leveled off at around 88 million tons per year possibly due to overfishing, economics and management practices.
  
  Fish are caught in a variety of ways including one man casting nets, huge trawlers, seining, driftnetting, handlining, longlining, gillnetting and diving. Other than overfishing, fishing practices harmful to the environment are illegal and often used in developing countries where local fisherman have no other immediate choice.
  
  The most common species making up the global fisheries are herring, cod, anchovy, flounder, tuna, shrimp, mullet, squid, crab, salmon, lobster, scallops and oyster. Mollusks and crustaceans are also widely sought. The fish that are caught are not always used for food. In fact, about 40% of fish are used for other purposes such as fishmeal to feed fish grown in captivity. For example cod is used for consumption but also to freeze for later use. Atlantic herring is used for canning, fishmeal and fish oil. The Atlantic menhaden is used for fishmeal and fish oil and Alaska Pollock is consumed but also used for fish paste to simulate crab. The Pacific cod has recently been used as a substitute for Atlantic cod which has been overfished.
  
  The amount of fish available in the oceans is an ever-changing number due to the effects of both natural causes and human developments. It will be necessary to manage ocean fisheries in the coming years to make sure the number of fish caught never makes it to zero. A lack of fish greatly impacts the economy of communities dependent on the resource as can be seen in Japan, eastern Canada, New England, Indonesia and Alaska. The anchovy fisheries off the coast of western South America have already collapsed and with numbers dropping violently from 20 million tons to 4 million tons- they may never fully recover. Other collapses include the California sardine industry, the Alaskan king crab industry and the Canadian northern cod industry. In Massachusetts alone the cod, haddock and yellowtail flounder industries have collapsed causing an economic disaster for the area.
  
  Due to the importance of fishing to the worldwide economy and the need for humans to understand human impacts on the environment, the academic division of fisheries science was developed. Fisheries science includes all aspects of marine biology in addition to economics and management skills and information. Marine conservation issues like overfishing, sustainable fisheries and management of fisheries are also examined through fisheries science.
  
  In order for there to be plenty of fish in the years ahead, fisheries will have to develop sustainable fisheries and some will have to close. Due to the constant increase in the human population the oceans have been overfished with a resulting decline of fish crucial to the economy and communities of the world. The control of the world’s fisheries is a controversial subject, as they cannot produce enough to satisfy the demand, especially when there aren’t enough fish left to breed in healthy ecosystems. Scientists are often in the role of fisheries managers and must regulate the amount of fishing in the oceans, a position not popular with those who have to make a living fishing ever decreasing populations.
  
  The two main questions facing fisheries management are:
  
  1) What is the carrying capacity of the ocean? How many fish are there and how many of which type of fish should be caught to make fisheries sustainable?
  
  2) How should fisheries resources be divided among people?
  
  Fish populate the ocean in patches instead of being spread out throughout the enormous expanse. The photic zone is only 10-30 m or 30-100 ft deep near the coastline, a place where phytoplankton have enough solar energy to grow in abundance and fish have enough to eat. Most commercial fishing takes place in these coastal waters as well as estuaries and the slope of the continental shelf. High nutrient contents from upwelling, run-off, the regeneration of nutrients and other ecological processes supply fish in these areas with the necessary requirements for life. The blue color of the water near the coastlines is the result of chlorophyll contained in aquatic plant life.
  
  Most fish are only found in very specific habitats. Shrimp are fished in river deltas that bring large amounts of freshwater into the ocean. The areas of highest productivity known as banks are actually where the continental shelf extends outward towards the ocean. These include the Georges Bank near Cape Cod, the Grand Banks near Newfoundland and Browns bank. Areas where the ocean is very shallow also contain many fish and include the middle and southern regions of the North Sea. Coastal upwelling areas can be found off of southwest Africa and off South America’s western coast. In the open ocean, tuna and other mobile species like yellowfin can be found in large amounts.
  
  The question of how many fish there are in the ocean is a complicated one but can be simplified using populations of fish instead of individuals. The word “cohort” refers to the year the fish was born and is used to gather population statistics. Cohorts start off as eggs with an extremely high rate of mortality, which declines as the fish gets older. Juvenile fish close to the age where they can be fished are called recruits. Cohort mortality is tied in with the species of fish due to variances in natural mortality. The biomass of a particular cohort is greatest when fish are rapidly growing and decreases as the fish get older and start to die.
  
  Scientists used theories and models to help determine the number and size of fish populations in the ocean. Production theory is the theory that production will be highest when the number of fish does not overwhelm the environment and there are not too few for genetic diversity of populations. The maximum sustainable yield is produced when the population is of intermediate size. Yield-per-recruit theory is the quest to determine the optimum age for harvesting fish. The theory of recruitment and stock allows scientists to make a guess about the optimum population size to encourage a larger population of recruits. All of the above theories must be flexible enough to allow natural fluctuations in the fish population to occur and still gather significant data. However, the theories are limited when taking into account the effect of humans on the environment and misinformation could result in overfishing or underfishing of the oceans resources.