Zombie Fleets And The Rising Costs Of Overfishing

The potential collapse of fish populations is a serious environmental problem, but unlike some of the more daunting challenges we face, it turns out all we have to do is stop paying for it. Global subsidies to industrial fishing companies have reached $27 billion according to a recent Global Ocean Commission report (h/t Gwynn Guilford at Quartz), led by the US, EU, China and Japan, and many industrial fishing companies would be unprofitable without those subsidies – zombies, in economic terms.

Overfishing, longer hauls, and higher costs are a vicious circle

The issue is that overfishing has already severely damaged natural fishing stocks, so trawlers have to go further and fish deeper to bring back the same amount of fish....