Gone Fishing - Consolidated

Many people have stopped eating cows, pigs, chickens, sheep, eggs, and milk

For health reasons, environmental reasons, and ethical reasons, yet the

existence and fate of fishes and animals from the ocean are still excluded from

this discussion

It is not because the numbers slaughtered are too few to be noticed.

Perhaps it is because they dwell in a realm out of view to us in the seeming

silence and darkness of the sea.

Yet, we remain oblivious to the ruin we

inflict

In 1988, commercial fishing landed 98 million metric tons of fish

Deep sea sport fishing in the US took nearly 500 million pounds in 1990.

Hundreds of species fall victim.

The numbers and ecological destruction grow

each year

For thousands of years, the seas has provided food for humans, but they cannot

withstand human overpopulation, selfishness, and technological power.

The US demand for fish has grown by one-fourth in the last eight years.

At its present rate, fishing will soon bleed the oceans to death

Few people who sit down to a plate of salmon, swordfish or tuna ever consider

how these animals were caught, their suffering, or the ecological devastation

caused by commercial fishing techniques.

The harvesting machines suck fish from

the sea in huge gulps.

It sucks up anything in its path.

It rips and shreds

bigger fish into little pieces.

Silently under the waves it roars insatiably

insanely.

Nets inflict the worst destruction.

Nets entangle everything they

encounter, enveloping and killings billions of sea creatures.

Drift nets,

forty miles wide, furl out across the flowing, silent world and kill all they

touch.

Half to two-thirds of the dead and dying animals are tossed back into

the sea.

Lost nets, called 'ghost nets,' wander on, killing without purpose

The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society estimates that drift netting kills 30,

000 Dall’s porpoise, 50,00 0northern fur seals, over a million seabirds,

and an unknown number of dolphins and sea turtles every year

Driven by profit, the fishing industry wages war on all animals it sees as

competitors.

Albatross and pelicans are shot on sight.

Orcas are killed by the

hundreds with guns and explosives.

Thousands of sea lions are clubbed and shot

off the pacific coast each year.

Hundreds of thousands of seal are slaughtered

all over the world.

Over three million sharks are clubbed and hooked.

The slow-moving gentle Beluga whale has been harpooned nearly to extinction

All for the commercial fishing industry

Over the last decade, scientists have warned that fish stocks have been

decimated by overfishing throughout the world.

If the killing continues,

our lifetime will witness the desolation of the great world ocean,

the last illusion of an inexhaustible world, of infinite commodities to be

taken and consumed

We see the surface of the sea, and ignore the devastation of the hidden world

that upholds life on earth.

We must look into the depths of the waters and

understand the delicate ecosystem, the intricate web of life of the ocean

Human beings must safeguard the seen and unseen together.

If we follow our same

blind path, we fail to see oceans and all their inhabitants as our origin,

our element, and part of ourselves, we will also soon disappear silently into

the ocean of space