When I was a child I always enjoyed going to aquariums and marine parks. I always wondered how these animals are trained, as they performed so well in the shows assigned to them. Until recently I realized that these marine creatures are subjected to unbearable torture and pain, and they are forced to live in such manmade conditions which will not help them to survive for a long time.

These parks and aquariums are billion-dollar industries based on the enduring of intelligent social creatures, which are denied all that's natural and necessary to them. After researching on this topic I had many questions brought up in my mind.

One of which was how are these marine creatures caught from the ocean? So then I discovered that in order to entrap these creatures they are subjected to sharp fishing gears and enormous fishing nets. But the most important threat to the life of these animals is bycatch fishing. Very few of us know about how this lack of awareness and empathy in the developing industrialization can profoundly influence our lives, nation and us as a general public on immense levels.

Bycatching the biggest threat to Marine Life
Oceans are home for upto 80% of all life on earth. What's more, with by far most of our oceans still neglected till this day, for me the seas are an indestructible source of a motivation. Additionally, as far back as I can remember, I've been enraptured with dolphins and whales. We comprehend that leaving trees or planting trees truly helps the carbon condition yet nothing matters more than keeping up with the integrity of ocean systems. The sea is the greatest carbon sink on earth.

But one of the biggest threats to the marine life is bycatch fishing. NOAA Fisheries defines bycatch as discarded catch of marine species and unobserved mortality due to a direct encounter with fishing vessels and gear, resulting in these animals being left behind dead or dying.

At the point when fishers attempt to get their target creatures whether utilizing handheld casting poles or spreading out nets or lines with snares that can extend for a significant distance, other marine creatures in the space can get accidently captured or entrapped. These can incorporate fish that are of wrong sex or size or fish species that are difficult to sell, or species that is unlawful to get because it is threatened with extinction this is known as Bycatch.

Bycatch is a worldwide and a developing issue influencing the whole world's oceans and seas numerous enormous waterways and marine well evolved creatures. Bycatch is a critical welfare concern and is a vital contributing component in the decline of several marine creatures such as cetaceans (like dolphins, whales, and porpoises), sharks, ocean turtles, birds, and non-target fish, (for example, species that can't be sold as food).

It is estimated that over 300,000 cetaceans die each year as a result of entanglement in fishing gear. Bycatch can slow the reconstructing of overfished stocks, and spot secured species, for instance, whales and sea turtles at extra risk. Bycatch of species like corals and sponges can make harm to secured corals and to significant fish territory.

So when eating any ocean creatures, regardless of whether it's fish, shellfish, or even frozen fish sticks; your buy isn't just answerable for their demises, yet unfortunately, for the passing of other ocean creatures, as well.

The issue is with more than four and a half million commercial fishing vessels at sea, it is an issue governments had for all intents and purposes abandoned authorizing.

In an ongoing disclosure it has shown that on the Atlantic French coast up to 10,000 dolphins are being killed each year by bycatch. This is multiple times all the more then dolphins being killed in Taiji Japan. This has been continuing for at least 30 years on the grounds that the French government has been exceptionally successful in hiding the problem.

Several internationally acclaimed organizations and forums are implementing strategies and solutions to reduce bycatch. One of the world's leading conservation organization World Wildlife Fund and its accomplices are attempting to create, test, and carry out alternative fishing gear and to integrate conservation science into effective fisheries management. WWF and its accomplices are likewise attempting to strengthen the legislation on bycatch and to raise consumer awareness about sustainably caught fish.

United Nations has also started an initiative known as United Nations Bycatch Mitigation Initiative. Under this initiative it looks to assist governments with resolving issues identifying with bycatch and specifically its relief. For implementation of this initiative an effective structure has been formed. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations also provides several technical guidelines for prevention and reduction of bycatch of marine mammals in capture fisheries.

NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council) founded in 1970 by a group of law students and attorneys at the forefront of the environmental movement are also concerned about this issue. As indicated by the U.S. Marine Mammal Protection Act, countries trading fish or fish products to this nation should demonstrate that their gear doesn't kill or harm marine mammals in overabundance of U.S. standards.

However for quite a long time, the United States has neglected to authorize this law, so NRDC is pushing the National Marine Fisheries Service to completely carry it out. NRDC is also attempting to support the laws administering bycatch in the U.S. waters.

In India there exist a few laws that deal with fishing in the country. A portion of these incorporate the Marine Fishery Regulation Act which specifies a Fishing Free Zone, 5 km from the shoreline. The Wildlife Protection Act of 1972 precludes the arrival and selling of a few types of marine organic entities, directly from marine mammals like dolphins and dugongs, a few types of elasmobranches (sharks and beams), a couple of types of fish and surprisingly other more modest marine life forms like molluscs and the echinoderms.

However the present monitoring is so lax, that unlawful fishing proceeds unchecked. These laws are anyway regularly abused, as a rule by paying off authorities. A genuine exertion must be made before the circumstance becomes irreversible – a predominant scene in many pieces of South East Asia.

As we have looked at various laws which are been enacted by different countries and organizations to reduce bycatching it is also necessary that these are implemented in every part of the world. If we protect more and fish less, and reestablish that sort of equilibrium and solid biological system they have a decent shot at enduring the difficult stretches ahead.

In the Gulf of Mexico and South Atlantic Bycatch Reduction Device has been introduced. This device is any gear or fish alteration intended to permit finfish to escape from a shrimp fish. BRDs are needed for use in shrimp fishes fished shoreward of the 100-fathom (183-meter) profundity shape in the Gulf of Mexico, and inside the EEZ of the South Atlantic locale. BRDs might have various abilities as indicated by various fishing conditions, and having a wide assortment of BRDs for use in the fisheries permits fishers more prominent adaptability to pick the best BRD for the particular neighborhood fishing conditions. This is one of the solutions found to reduce bycatch.

Another significant issue is the plastic garbage which is thrown into the ocean. Plastics in the ocean kill or harm more than 300,000 marine animals every year, said Ms. Earle. Plastic is attacking each and every side of the world's oceans, with immense coasting trash patches gathering in the sea, similar to the great pacific garbage patch. A few animals get caught in the plastic garbage, while others like seabirds, turtles, fish, clams and mussels ingest the plastics, which wind up obstructing their stomach related frameworks and causing demise. Fish and birds botch more modest plastic particles for food and feed on them in tremendous amounts.

Truth be told today what might be compared to a trash load of plastic is unloaded in the ocean each and every moment, joining the more than 150 million tons previously drifting there. In any case, this plastic separates into more modest and more modest pieces known as micro plastics, which now outnumber the stars in the Milky Way Galaxy by at least 500 times, and is seeping into each living animal in the sea.

The possibilities for marine recuperation, for rewilding are amazingly invigorating; however it can possibly occur if extremely enormous spaces of ocean are shut to commercial fishing. And keeping in mind that the governments are not ready to make a move, and keeping in mind that this industry is fundamentally unregulated; the solitary moral thing to do is to quit eating fish.

We are at battle with the seas and in the event that we win this conflict we will lose it all since humanity will not be ready to live on this planet with a dead ocean. It's the absolute industrialization of fishing that is the issue here.

References:

1. https://oceanconference.un.org/commitments/?id=19333
2. https://www.nrdc.org/issues/prevent-global-bycatch-whales-and-other-wildlife
3. http://www.fao.org/3/cb2887en/CB2887EN.pdf
4. https://www.worldwildlife.org/threats/bycatch
5. https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/international/bycatch/national-bycatch-reduction-strategy
6. Seaspiracy- documentary on Netflix

Written By: Apeksha Dhoka - T.Y BBA LLB (Hons.) MIT WPU Faculty of Law