Rotten - Cod is Dead Blog - Kennady Krog

In class on Feburary 16th, 2023, we watched a documentary on the fishing industry, highlighting how important it is, and the issues it is having. The fishing industry is a HUGE industry. Honestly, before this documentary, I had no idea how essential it really is. Billions of people around the world rely on fish, and fishing puts millions into the US economy annually. There is about 5 billion pounds of seafood in the US alone, as the US is the 2nd largest seafood consumer next to China. due to the amount of people relying on the fishing industry to survive, this industry is an extremely delicate and fragil system. if one thing goes wrong, it all goes wrong. 

New Bedford, MA has been the biggest US seafood port for hundreds of years. It is so important, that if anyone puts any garbage or pollution into these waters, it is felt by people all over the world. But this is only one glimpse on why the fishing industry is so so delicate. New Bedford sells to the global market, and because of this, it brings a lot of money for international trade into the economy. 

However, unfortunately, fisherman are barely getting by nowadays. For thousands of years, oceans had more fush than humans could consume, but with a corrupt system and a lot of foreign intervention, overfishing, etc ... there aren't as many fish. and it has devestating affects. One of the biggest problems the fishing industry is going through, is the problem of catch shares. Since fish are disappearing, and theres still a lot of different businesses in the fishing industry, the federal government put laws out that there are catch shares, and each business has a quota of how much fish they can catch in a year. I found this extremely interesting, because the people who are making these laws for fisherman to follow, aren't apart of the industry. They basically have no idea what theyre talking about, and fisherman don't have any say, which makes it corrupt. These catch shares have put so many businesses out of business, because most of them don't have the money to buy more quota, if they catch more fish that their catch shares allow for. 

These catch shares are basically making a public thing (fish, ocean, etc... ) private,  and it's causing so much pain and battle amongst fisherman, environmental groups, etc... If you don't have money or power, you won't stay in business, simply because more powerful groups will take over, like the case of Carlos Raphael, who had 25% quota. 

This documentary was extremely interesting to me as I have family in MA, near new bedford, and even though they aren't in the fishing industry, the affects of the fishing industry are definetely felt throughout the area she lives in. It's interesting to hear about all the hardships the fisherman go through, that live just 20 minutes away from my family. 

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