Myth: There are plenty of fish in the sea

People often think that someone else is the one to blame.  We forget to take accountability for ourselves, and our own actions that can be irresponsible.  Most people have heard, or even been told once after a break up that there are plenty of fish in the sea, meaning there is an endless supply if one relationship doesn't work out, and to not give up hope.  We take that into literal form, and begin to believe that in fact there are plenty of fish in the sea, and we don't need to worry about overfishing because it's not really a problem.  We believe that maybe for some people it is a problem, but because we still have many different options available at the supermarket that the problem doesn't exist for us.  In reality it does.  The population of fish has decreased immensely throughout history.  According to NPR people base things on what is considered normal, and normal changes over time.  A study revealed drastic changes in the ecosystem number of marine stock, or the population decreased over the past 100 years (Christensen, Guenette & all, 2003).  It takes decades for fish species to rebuild their population once on the verge of extinction.  The study sought out to find fish populations in the North Atlantic.  They estimated "that the biomass of the high trophic level fish species in the North Atlantic declined by two-thirds during the second half of the twentieth-century" (p.17).  This study indicates that fishing at great intensity is not sustainable.  The fish populations can't sustain the fishing industries demand to supply more and more.  The populations will continue to decrease until we notice that it is in fact a myth that there are plenty of fish in the sea, and we need to acknowledge there is a problem from the facts.




Christensen, V., Guenette, S., Heymans, J., Walters, C., Watson, R., Zeller, D. & Pauly, D.
Hundred-year decline Of North Atlantic Predatory Fish. http://data.fisheries.ubc.ca/references/pdfs/faf103.pdf