BlackMarket Fish

Trafficking of wildlife does not only include the illegal trading of big, iconic or exotic animals. It also includes illegal harvesting and trading of other small wildlife. 

Instead of the usual iconic animals, today's post will be about the illegal poaching of smaller, less iconic animals.

File: The Obama administration announced new measures to combat black-market fishing and protect ocean ecosystems on Tuesday.

Black market fishing is estimated to cost the global economy by about $23 billion annually! Black market fishing is the unregulated and unreported fishing.

Illegal fishing has led to the collapse of wild fisheries, where fishes are harvested at rate that is way higher than its restoration rate!

This has led to a dwindling fish stocks, and increased competition between law-abiding fishermen and the illegal poachers. Some fishermen, unable to cope with the competition, will eventually ignore the fishing quotas that are set to allow fish population to rebound. Illegal fishing has also led to the decreased in prices of fish, where they overstock the demands for fish! Fishermen that are dependent on fishing for their livelihood suffered the greatest impact. 

Fishing is a major source of livelihood along the Mekong (Photo: Shamsuddin Ahmed/IRIN)

With majority of commercial fish stocks over-exploited and collapsed, many countries turned to fish aquaculture as an alternative! However, fish aquaculture has several environmental impacts as well. For instance, escaped fish can spread diseases to endemic species! Additionally, a lot of food is required to feed the fishes in the aquaculture! Ironically, most of these fish food are made from wild-caught fish!



Illegal poaching of wildlife, whether iconic or not, can have grave and adverse impacts on the environment. Illicit animal trading does not just affect endemic species and the environment, but could also impact us just as gravely and adversely.   




Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) Fishing.


References

Exposure, (2014). WWF - Chile on Exposure. [online] Available at: https://wwf.exposure.co/chile [Accessed 9 Nov. 2014].

Wwf.panda.org, (2014). EU Clears Five States Following their Improvements in Fighting Illegal Fishing, While Red-cardi. [online] Available at: http://wwf.panda.org/what_we_do/footprint/smart_fishing/latest_fishing_news/?230871/EU-Clears-Five-States-Following-their-Improvements-in-Fighting-Illegal-Fishing-While-Red-carding-Sri-Lanka [Accessed 9 Nov. 2014].