End Of The Line Analysis

Fish are dying, people know and they’re still killing them. End of the line is a documentary that focuses on how we know that fish are depleting and people are still overfishing. This video really opened my eyes to all the problems with the fishing industry and how we are treating fish. In Newfoundland, the fisheries have been fishing Cod for decades; collecting tonnes and tonnes of fish every year. They knew that the cod was starting to run out, but they didn’t do anything about it. Now the Cod is practically gone and probably will not recover in our lifetime. This shows the tragedy of the commons because they knew it was declining, but for their benefit, they kept overfishing the cod. This is happening with fish all over the world because no one is listening to the catch limits. For example, the recommended catch limit for the bluefish tuna is 15,000 tonnes globally, but 10,000 tonnes for it to recover. The European Union has set the limit at 29,500 tonnes and still, the actual catch is 61,000 tonnes which is ⅓ of the bluefish tuna.

They figured out that the Chinese were making up their numbers which covered up the global numbers because the Chinese make a big part of the fishing industry. They lied about their numbers because the more they “caught” the more the communist officials got paid. But China was still catching as much as the rest of the world which was less and less. No one knew how bad the global catch was getting so by the time they figured out it was too late. This means now they have to scramble to fix the declining fish