Page 58 - Navy Journal 219
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Navy Journal 2019
world, huge fishing pressure is degrading very promising coast, estuaries,
mangrove and many other marine habitant including nursery grounds bringing
imbalance and disorder (IUCN, 2015). Continuation of such ill fishing practices
may impact negatively in future bringing further decline in marine landing of
Bangladesh marine sector. Therefore, these negative impact and imbalance
would degrade the marine environment, biodiversity and ecosystem day by day.
In addition, according to forecast ocean-based industries are anticipated to
increase manifold by 2030. For instance, the industrial-scale fisheries, marine
and coastal tourism and port activities may double and marine aquaculture may
jump to triple by 2030. Hence, pressures on marine ecosystems are likely to
intensify in the coming years (OECD, 2017). But the impact of the pressure
would be understood from real life examples.
Visualization of the Imbalance: Examples
Human activities also affect inshore ecosystem and environment, and the
connectivity of the marine environment means that such activities may occur a
considerable distance from the sea, but can still have a significant impact on the
communities in question. For example, overfishing in off Alaska coast was the
main reason which caused collapse of Steller communities of sea lions and
harbour seals. These are the main food source for the killer whales, which was
forced to take alternative prey, including sea otters around the Aleutian Islands
(Jones, 2002). Sea otters prey is sea urchins, thus due to the decline of sea otters,
populations of sea urchins exploded which led to the over grazing and collapse
of kelp beds. This kelp beds are the food source and home for many marine
species. (Estes et al., 1998). Another example is Thailand where overfishing
created decline of sea fish creating imbalance both for ecosystem and consumers.
Fisheries department of Thailand allowed overfishing specially overfishing of
anchovy fish. As anchovy is in the food chain of few other economy fish,
harvesting of anchovy fish decreased and fish stock of other economy fishes
declined. In 1962 fish catch per hour was 297 kg per hour which dropped to 17
kg per hour by 2011. As a result the price of most of the anchovy fish dropped to
100 Baht creating a loss of 765 Baht in economy fishes (Chantith, 2015).
Requirement of Declaration of Marine Protected Area
After a growing understanding and visualization of the threat to marine
ecosystem and biodiversity, in 1962, World Congress on National Parks started
talking on the protection of ecosystem and environment in their first international
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