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December 12, 2008
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Okay, so 90 percent of the world's large fish are gone, says Sylvia Earle. Do I need to stop eating sushi?
— The Editors
Santa Fe, New Mexico
 That's a great question. At this rate, you really have two options. A) Keep savoring every last morsel of tuna in each maguro roll, and eventually watch the planet’s big fish disappear. Or B) Stop eating tuna altogether and still eventually watch the planet’s big fish disappear.
A famed marine biologist and former chief scientist for NOAA, Sylvia Earle is no alarmist—it's her facts that are alarming. Since the rise of commercial fisheries in the 1950s, stocks of large predatory fish have dropped 90 percent. Overfishing is rampant, and it's largely driven by the luxury food market and government subsidies, she points out.
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Do you have a question of your
own?
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Don't believe her? Then follow the money. According to a recent UN and World Bank report, the world's commercial fisheries are now losing $50 billion a year because they have to spend so much more capital to find what little is left of the oceans' vanishing fish stocks. The Japanese government gives out nearly $3 billion a year to its floundering fishing fleet, the EU gives about $1.7 billion, and the US gives $1 billion.
Earle has stopped eating fish, but neither she nor you can change the world by turning down sushi. Instead, you should follow her lead by mobilizing, enhancing awareness of the problem, and becoming politically active in the solution. (This advice could really be applied to any facet of environmentalism.) Unless governments like ours become more aggressive in tackling the problem sustainably—and do it soon—big fish will vanish, and our tax dollars will have subsidized the commercial fishing industry to its own demise.
Greasy Rider
Greg Melville is the author of Greasy Rider, a new book in which he drives across the country in a fry-oil-powered car investigating the future of green technology. A journalist who has written for Outside, The New York Times, and Popular Mechanics, Melville blogs about all things eco at greasyriderbook.blogspot.com. He lives with his wife, kids, and dog in Asheville North Carolina.
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