Human appetite
The human appetite, from the first fisher to the six and a half billion potential seafood consumers alive today, is ultimately the root of the marine fisheries crisis. The human mind, equal in number and technically more impressive, is ultimately the decider of how we satiate the collective appetite for seafood and whether we do so with only ourselves in mind.
Aside from mushrooms, seafood is the last wild food regularly eaten in Western society. Overfishing imperils this last globalized hunter-gatherer food system and those humans who still largely rely on fish for survival. Overfishing can be considered in two primary categories: a Malthusian form, a combination of overpopulation and destructive fishing practices (Pauly, 1997), and an industrial form, which is the coupling of over-efficient fishing techniques with lax and unsustainable policies.
Whales are mammals that nurse their young, communicate with one another, and apparently exhibit high levels of intelligence. However, fish are, for the most part, cold-blooded, expressionless creatures. But, in some ways, fish are not that different from birds and, as anyone who has ever been to England knows, there is no shortage of sentiment for avian species. Like the albatross, tunas cover remarkable migratory distances. Like an eagle, an octopus can also build an impressive home. And, like many macaws, the Moorish idol chooses a mate for life. Fish are not simply food. When discussing their future, we should engage as citizens concerned about Earth’s fellow inhabitants as much as consumers worried only about our appetite.
in Jacquet, 2009 | PhD Thesis: Fish as food in an age of globalization