🎒 Base knowledge and understanding

🌿 Content

🔑 Key terms

Phase 1: Why not just stop?

Last lesson you saw the Monterey sardine collapse, and you know that the maximum sustainable yield is the most a stock can give year after year. So here is today's puzzle.

We know many fish stocks are in trouble. Why is it so hard to simply stop fishing them?

Talk with the person next to you for two minutes and list as many reasons as you can. Keep your list, because each reason points to a different way of managing the sea.

One number to start you off: around 24 per cent of north-east Atlantic fish stocks are still being fished unsustainably, even though the science is well known (The Conversation).

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Where this lesson is going

There is no single fix. We manage the sea with a toolkit that works at four levels, from international treaties down to your own shopping basket (4.3.8). We protect patches of sea so life can recover and spill back out (4.3.9). And we farm the sea to take the pressure off wild stocks, which brings new problems of its own (4.3.10).

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Phase 2: The mitigation toolkit

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4.3.8 Unsustainable exploitation of freshwater and marine ecosystems can be mitigated through policy legislation addressing the fishing industry and changes in consumer behaviour.

Include actions at international, national, local and individual level, including permits, quotas, seasons, mesh size, zones and food labelling.

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Two levers, four levels

We can act on the sea in two broad ways. Policy and legislation controls how the industry is allowed to fish. Changing consumer behaviour changes what we choose to buy and eat. Both can be applied at four levels, from international cooperation down to the individual shopper. To set the scene, watch Who's in charge of keeping your seafood sustainable? (about a minute).

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/warAm8EY3sY

Sustainable seafood labels and guides (food labelling, 4.3.8)

• Marine Stewardship Council (MSC), the blue label for wild-caught fish
• Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC), the label for farmed fish
• Marine Conservation Society Good Fish Guide

How each tool works

The skill is to link each tool back to the fish population. A closed season works because it lets fish spawn before they can be caught. A minimum mesh size works because the gaps let young fish slip through and survive to breed. Food labelling bans nothing, yet it still shifts what gets caught, by changing what shoppers ask for.

Match the tool to the reason

1. For each tool, write one sentence saying how it protects fish stocks. Try it before checking the infographic.

   1. Permits and licences

   2. Quotas

   3. Closed seasons

   4. Minimum mesh size

   5. Zones

   6. Food labelling

You decide

A coastal nation's most valuable fish stock is in steep decline, and you are advising the government. No single tool is enough on its own, so you will need a combination.

Build a plan

1. Choose three tools from at least two different levels.

2. In one line each, justify your choice.

3. Name one weakness of each tool you chose.

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Links to earlier lessons. Quotas and the total allowable catch follow directly from the maximum sustainable yield in water.3.2 Collapse, limits and warming waters. The plankton-to-fish food base these stocks depend on was covered in water.3.1 From plankton to plate.

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