Paradise in Peril

Or What Happens When The 'Tragedy of the Commons' Hits the Sea

 Sunday was a real eye-opening experience for me.  I had been hearing about the Tragedy of the Commons for years, since high school at least, and I had learned in many college classes at my home uni about the terrible conditions of the world's fisheries.  But until Sunday I had never seen any evidence of it first-hand.  This is not to say that I didn't believe it, the numbers and figures I had learned about left little room for doubt.  But something can definitely be said for seeing something for oneself.  And that is just what happened on Sunday.  For the Fisheries Science class I am taking in Australia we went out on the school's research vessel and went trawling for prawn (shrimp).  To catch prawn, midwater trawling is performed which is a type of fishing that uses cylindrical nets that are pulled along on either side of the boat to catch the prawn that are in the water column.  Unfortunately this also leads to the catch of many other organisms in the water column including, but not limited to, sea turtles, sharks, squid, rays and sea snakes.  Nets are now required by law to have devices to reduce by-catch, but as we saw on Sunday, they don't do the job 100%.  In the four trawls that we did, we never saw more than 5 prawn at once, but did each time get buckets full of fish.  We also got a shark, a few sea snakes and a few squid.  And so I now understand how the seemingly unlimited supply of prawns must have enticed many a fisherman to go reap the bounty of the sea but has now left the prawn industry flailing in the water while wiping out numerous species of sea creatures.