Why no cry? Because the government is picking up our paycheck! To further prove the economic futility of a deep-sea fishery.
Rashid Sumaila and Daniel Pauly of the University of British Columbia in Canada recently studied the subsidies paid to bottom trawl fleets around the world. They found that the fleets receive over $152 million each year and that without these funds, the deep-sea fisheries industry would operate at a $50 million annual loss.”From an ecological perspective we cannot afford to destroy the deep-sea,” says Sumaila. “From an economic perspective, deep-sea fisheries cannot occur without government subsidies. The bottom line is that current deep fisheries are not sustainable.” Pauly adds: “There is surely a better way for governments to spend money than by paying subsidies to a fleet that burns 1.1 billion litres of fuel annually to maintain paltry catches of old growth fish from highly vulnerable stocks, while destroying their habitat in the process.”
So what countries subsidize?
- Japan
- South Korea
- Russia
- Spain
- Australia
- Ukraine
- Faroe Islands
- Estonia
- Iceland
- Lithuania
- Estonia
- Latvia
- France
For once the U.S. is not leading the way to destroying the globe, well at least not through destroying the deep.
