Why We Should Limit Fishing North of 72°N (Floe Edge Blog)

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Published by Floe Edge Blog
19 Feb 2020
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There is this party starting in a very cool place and everyone who showed up is a little uncomfortable. Things are heating up – and not necessarily in a good way. This is the state of affairs in the Circumpolar North and its Arctic waters. Melting polar ice is opening up new navigational opportunities and offering access to previously inaccessible resources under the vast ocean floor. Metaphorically speaking, it is a nice place to hold a party. Yet the question is: who else is likely to show up and will they all get along? Basically, trans-Arctic commercial shipping requires access to icebreakers. There aren’t many places left in the world where we have yet to fish. A few areas around Antarctica, the Central Arctic Ocean and the northern part of Baffin Bay are about it. And in all the places where we have come to fish in the past, we have done so in the absence of any clear understanding of the relationship of that area to adjacent areas, the relationship of the fish to adjacent fishes, and the impact of the new fishery on the broader ecosystem. The inherent risk of that approach has been demonstrated time and again throughout the Northwest Atlantic and beyond. 

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