• Question: are the fish in danger

    Asked by Bee to Aileen, Caroline, Christopher, Rehemat, Stephanie, Stephen on 5 Mar 2018.
    • Photo: Stephen Twomlow

      Stephen Twomlow answered on 5 Mar 2018:

      Unfortunately yes fish are in danger, due to not only over fishing, but also due to climate change that warms the seas and causes them to become more acid. This damages the coral that protects our coastlines from high seas and where many young fish are born and grow.

    • Photo: Aileen Baird

      Aileen Baird answered on 5 Mar 2018:

      Stephen has answered this pretty well- yes the fish are in danger! I think it is important to remember as well that there are lots of other plants and animals that form the ocean habitats, and these are just as important as the fish!

    • Photo: Rehemat Bhatia

      Rehemat Bhatia answered on 5 Mar 2018:

      Yep fish are in danger 🙁 Stephen and Aileen have answered this well. Climate change can cause habitats to become unsuitable for some types of fish to live.

      Overfishing is also a problem. This is when fish are caught in large quantities in an area. If no fish are left, then none will exist in that area 🙁

    • Photo: Stephanie Mann

      Stephanie Mann answered on 5 Mar 2018:

      Not only are the fish in danger but other sea living creatures and plants. Sadly there are some areas in the sea that are already completely uninhabitable. But it’s not all bad news, there is great work being done to understand our delicate oceans and how we can prevent climate change and overfishing to support ocean life!

    • Photo: Christopher Nankervis

      Christopher Nankervis answered on 5 Mar 2018:

      Yes, I think that our ocean’s fish are in danger.

      The main concern is over-fishing when we remove more fish from the sea than are replaced (by the baby fish). Some fisherman also break the law when they do this, known as illegal fishing.
      Often the smaller fish are not sold in the supermarkets, so when they are fished they are usually thrown back into the sea from the boat after they have died.

      Climate change is also affecting fish stocks, as some fish prefer cooler waters in order to live.
      Rainfall is also more acidic now than before, since carbon dioxide produced from burning fossil fuels (in products such as petrol, diesel, coal, gas) dissolves in water to form carbonic acid.

      Since the food chain of the ocean depends on small animals that make their shells out of delicate material that is dissolved by these acids. This means that we will have less big fish in the sea in the future.

    • Photo: Caroline Hickman

      Caroline Hickman answered on 5 Mar 2018:

      Yes – I agree that the fish and other sea plants and animals are in danger because of climate change, ocean acidification, warming seas, over fishing and pollution (plastics and other pollutants). What is especially sad is to listen to people saying that they used to be able to see lots of fish when they went swimming or diving, and now there are less and less fish. One young person I spoke with about this in the Maldives said ‘its like all my friends are dying now there are less fish that I used to see all the time’. So although the loss of the fish is important, this also affects us. Not only will there be less fish as food for us and others, but as we loose the fish, we loose an important resource for people, emotionally as well as physically. It makes people sad when they see this happening.

Comments