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Overfishing Threatens More Than Ocean Life. It's Also Fueling Emissions

From Sophie Kevany, SentientMedia.org
August 2024

37.5 million tons of carbon were released into the atmosphere by tuna, swordfish and other large sea animals targeted for slaughter and consumption between 1950 and 2014. Estimates using EPA data suggest it would take about 160 million acres of forest a year to absorb that amount of carbon.

murdered Fishes
Credit: Selene Magnolia / We Animals Media

In the search for winning climate solutions, the world’s oceans are an undisputed powerhouse. Oceans absorb around 31 percent of our carbon dioxide emissions, and hold 60 times more carbon than the atmosphere.

Critical to this valuable carbon cycle are the billions of sea creatures who live and die underwater — whales and anchovies alike. Yet our ever-growing global appetite for fish threatens the oceans’ climate power. So much so that researchers in Nature argue there is “a strong climate change case” for putting a stop to overfishing.

Even though there is fairly widespread agreement on the need to end this practice, there is virtually no legal authority to make it happen. Still, if the planet could figure out a way to stop overfishing, the climate benefits would be enormous: 5.6 million metric tons of CO2 per year.

And bottom trawling, a practice akin to “rototilling” the sea floor, increases emissions from global fishing by over 200 percent, according to research from earlier this year. To store the same amount of carbon using forests would require 432 million acres.

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Please read the ENTIRE ARTICLE HERE, including:

  • The Ocean’s Powerful Carbon Cycle, Explained
  • Curbing Overfishing and Bottom Trawling Would Boost Carbon Sequestration
  • Should Fish Be Considered a Climate-Friendly Food?
Posted on All-Creatures.org: August 8, 2024
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