Fishery Quotes (3 quotes)
The ocean is like a checking account where everybody withdraws but nobody makes a deposit. This is what's happening because of overfishing. Many fisheries have collapsed, and 90 percent of the large fish, sharks and tuna and cod, are gone.
From interview with Terry Waghorn, 'Can We Eat Our Fish and Protect Them Too?', Forbes (21 Feb 2012)
Those who nod sagely and quote the tragedy of the commons in relation to environmental problems from pollution of the atmosphere to poaching of national parks tend to forget that Garrett Hardin revised his conclusions many times…. He recognized, most importantly, that anarchy did not prevail on the common pastures of medieval England in the way he had described…. “A managed commons, though it may have other defects, is not automatically subject to the tragic fate of the unmanaged commons,” wrote Hardin…. At sea, where a common exists in most waters… None of Hardin’s requirements for a successfully managed common is fulfilled by high-seas fishery regimes.
In The End of the Line: How Overfishing is Changing the World and what We Eat (2004), 153-155.
We need to move from the open access regime that results in overfishing in much of the ocean to rights-based fisheries, giving fishermen a vested interest in preventing overfishing and increasing compliance with catch limits.
From The Nature of Nature: Why We Need the Wild (2020).