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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