Super fishing screwup

Simple insights into complex problems - good or bad thing?

Australia has banned the super trawler MV Margiris from its waters until at least 2014 with further scientific study to be undertaken of the effect on the marine environment of "super fishing". Also in the past week the country has announced the world's largest network of marine parks.

From a scientific point of view, is superfishing the wrong way to go about things? I think so. An analogous operation on land would be to drag nets through forests and across plains collecting pretty much all wildlife in your path, then sorting out the catch with commercial value from the rest of the "bycatch" that you'd discard onto the ground. Is there anyone anywhere who'd find "superfishing" on land to be acceptable?

I think the opposite trend would be appropriate in fisheries today. This has been the case on the land where agriculture and livestock farming has moved toward more intensive farming alomgside greater protection of forests, parks and rivers. Our seas might also benefit from a trend toward more farming of fish within certain restricted areas of the seas, away from environmentally more damaging and relatively unconstrained trawling.

Of course other problems arise with intensive farming practices. Concern is justified over the ethical treatment of animals in places like feedlots, for instance. Yet the path toward more sustainable and morally acceptable farming on land has led away from the analogues of "supertrawling".

Too "simple" for some? - on environmental and scientific grounds a move toward fish farms, away from super trawlers, should be the preferable option.