Time to Suspend All Deep-Ocean Commercial Fishing?

Source: Daniel Jack Chasan, Crosscut.com, September 26t, 2011.

Is the ocean half full or half empty? Of fish, that is. (If you believe in global warming and its corollary, polar melting, then you can assume the ocean will be fuller and fuller of water.) That depends on where you focus — and whom you ask.

At the beginning of September, a group of marine scientists urged an end to commercial fishing in the deep ocean. Their report cited the destruction of long-lived species such as the orange roughy and the incidental damage to deep-sea coral. The report’s lead author, Elliott Norse of the Bellevue-based Marine Conservation Institute, said, “The deep sea is the world’s worst place to catch fish.”

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