Translated by Els Derho
Translation to the article in the link:
By-catches, a good word for the largest waste on Earth
Every year 35% of the fish catch, that’s 49 million tons, is thrown overboard. The 35% is a figure of the industry itself. In reality, it’s much more. 90% of discarded animals will not survive. This form of waste is called "by-...catch" the catch of other species of fish or animals other than the ones they set out to catch.
Why throw by-catches overboard? There are several reasons for this. Because the fish caught are too small, for example. In order to be sold, or because it is simply not permitted: in addition to quotas based on quantity, there are also rules that prohibit juvenile fish to land. Another reason is purely commercial: some species are difficult to handle, or sell, or are simply not profitable enough.
Also a lot of by-catch will disappear in the sea because the fishermen are not allowed to catch them. In this category : whales, dolphins, porpoises, sea turtles, sharks, and some of the albatross....
For a slightly more concrete idea of the havoc that by-catch is causing, a few concrete examples. These figures come from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), an American bureau dealing with meteorology and Oceanography, and of the food and Agriculture Organization (FAO or food and Agricultural organization of the United Nations.
In the Bering Sea between Alaska and Russia every year 16 million Red King crab are lost because of too small to sell. That is five times more than the number of red king crabs that ultimately reach the market.
For each 5 kilos of shrimp that shrimp fishermen catch of the Gulf of Mexico, 40 to 45 kg according to the fishermen, uninteresting "thrash fish" (poor fish)are killed. Mainly Ray, eels, flounder, redfish, stromateidae, deep-sea red bass (which can be up to 50 years), and spadefish. In addition, a lot of sea turtles and sharks die in the nets of the shrimp fishermen.
Steve Branstetter of the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) calculated that a young red snapper, fashionable and popular fish culinary, was 0.4-0.5% of the by-catch in the shrimp. That seems to be nothing, but it’s 25 million pieces.
To put it in a different way: when shrimp fishing in the Gulf of Mexico, which is good for about 2.5% of the global fishing for shrimps, each year, 30 billion kg of fish are being discarded. 90% of them is dead. There’s not much left of the romantic picture that you received for that industry in the blockbuster Forrest Gump.
The tropical shrimp fishery, often using small mesh nets, is a notorious killer. But certainly not the only one. American observers sailed out with the 74-Member Japanese squid fleet. They counted 7.9 million squid caught. And this was thrown dead overboard: 253.000 Tunas, 82.000 blue sharks,
10 000 salmon, 30 000 sea birds, 52 seals, 22 sea turtles, 914 dolphins, and 141 porpoises.