A fish tale

When we hear about overfishing, we usually equate it with no longer being able to order our favorite yellowfin tuna at a restaurant without feeling guilty. But there are plenty of places around the world where the consequences are much more serious. Fishing is the main source of income for many communities, particularly in developing nations. When the supply decreases, it can force the fishermen to find other ways to provide food and make a living.

The recent news about the Somali pirates who are hijacking ships and holding them for ransom failed to underscore some of the underlying facts that drove some of these men to become pirates. Somalia, with its severely depressed economy and without a stable government for more than two decades to provide protection of its coastline, loses more than $300 million dollars worth of seafood each year to foreign thieves and illegal dumping of toxic wastes. The “pirates” started out as vigilante patrols trying to collect taxes from the people stealing their fish. They only graduated to full-fledged pirates after seeing no alternative to their desperate situation. We are becoming accustomed to getting bits and pieces of the story as our collective attention spans have decreased over the years. We currently get much of our news via  concise messages, like twitter or a news ticker running across the bottom of our television screen on CNN. The down side of this headline focused approach to media is that it doesn’t allow enough space for the back story which helps us all draw our own conclusions.