Student Congress Legislation & Evidence


Con: Ocean Plastic Clean Up Bad



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Con: Ocean Plastic Clean Up Bad


No scientists support the passive collection method.

Kazo, President at Wildlife Research Team, 2013 (Donna, President/Director/co-founder at Wildlife Research Team, Inc, http://wildliferesearchteam.wordpress.com/tag/boyan-slat/

Experienced marine debris researchers, on www.MarineDebris.info compiled guidelines for cleanup of debris, especially plastics, from the open sea. Slat did attempt to address these issues but I have yet to find an actual scientist who supports his plan (doesn’t mean they don’t exist, just that the community of researchers who have been battling marine debris for years do not agree with him).


Ocean clean-up is a massive undertaking that could bankrupt nations.



Kazo, President at Wildlife Research Team, 2013
In closing, I quite liked this comment from “Harry,” who watches over a particular beach in Maine, and discusses his findings in his blog, on Slat’s plan: “This idea that if we’ve messed something up, there’s science/tech out there that can fix it. That keeps us from having to make the hard choices about our lifestyle. In this case, there isn’t. It is not possible to clean the oceans up of their debris. Not without breaking the bank of every nation on earth and scooping out and killing all the life in its first 100 feet of depth. That’s what we have done to our planet in just a couple generations. That’s plastic’s legacy. We cannot actively go out and clean it up in any meaningful way. What we can do is to change consumption behavior, change materials, improve waste management; do the things that stop persistent plastic from getting in the ocean in the first place.”¶ It starts with me, and with you.

Quick technology fixes to environmental problems like the ocean plastic clean-up plan will divert attention and resources from more successful courses of action.

Wilson, Associate Director at The 5 Gyres Institute, 2013 (Stiv,”The Fallacy of Cleaning the Gyres of Plastic With a Floating "Ocean Cleanup Array" , Inhabitat, July 17, http://inhabitat.com/the-fallacy-of-cleaning-the-gyres-of-plastic-with-a-floating-ocean-cleanup-array/)

It’s a great story, but it’s just a story. I find debating with gyre cleanup advocates akin to trying to reason with someone who will argue with a signpost and take the wrong way home. Gyre cleanup is a false prophet hailing from La-La land that won’t work – and it’s dangerous and counter productive to a movement trying in earnest stop the flow of plastic into the oceans. Gyre cleanup plays into the hand of industry, but worse, it diverts attention and resources from viable, but unsexy, multi-pronged and critically vetted solutions.¶ Slat’s project as it stands is in the fairy tale phase, which is where all the other gyre cleanup schemes out there are, too. So far Slat’s is not a ‘design schematic’ nor is it ‘engineered’ nor is there a business plan attached to it—a fact that Slat all of the sudden underscores in an update to the website, saying he’s just conducting a ‘feasibility study,’ and that his intention was never to suggest that it was presently viable. But that certainly is not what his website suggested before the media attention—and this is precisely why it got so much media attention. From the website: “Extract 7,250,000,000KG of plastic from the oceans in just 5 years per gyre, Contribute Now!”¶ Well, if Slat’s intention is to funnel the money into a feasibility study, maybe I can save him some money. Let’s look at gyre cleanup schemes from a vantage governed not by dreams, passion and media preciousness, but from something a little more effective and a lot more boring—reason. The sea is cruel and it’s really really really big.


A Resolution to Stop Overfishing




  1. Whereas, commercialized fishing in the oceans bordering the United States is not well regulated; and



  1. Whereas, the lack of regulation has led to massive over-fishing; and




  1. Whereas, over-fishing has reached a crisis level; since 1950 nearly 90% of large fish have been




  1. fished out of the ocean; and



  1. Whereas, we can address this problem can be addressed through a system of quotas and tradable fish




  1. shares; and




  1. Whereas, other countries have found success by using fish limits and sellable fish shares.




  1. THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED by the Student Congress Assembled that: the United States federal




  1. government should create a nation-wide fish quota in the form of tradable fish shares.


Pro: Individual Fishing Quotas

Current Federal government fishing management fails – a new approach is need



Carl Safina, founding president of the Blue Ocean Institute, 2013. Carl writes extensively on the changing oceans. "A Future for U.S. Fisheries." Issues in Science and Technology. University of Texas at Dallas, 27 Nov. 2013. http://issues.org/25-4/safina-4/ Web. 01 July 2014. CS
Current policies have slowed but not stopped the depletion of fish stocks. A new approach based on restoration is needed. For the fishing industry in the United States, and for the fishery resources on which the industry depends, there is good news and bad news. Bad news still predominates, as many commercial fishers and their communities have suffered severe financial distress and many fish stocks have declined considerably in numbers. Poor management by the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), which regulates the fishing industry, and some poor choices by many fishers have contributed to the problems. But there are some bright spots, small and scattered, that suggest that improvements are possible. Starting with the bad news, the federal government’s fisheries management remains primitive, simplistic, and, in important cases, ineffectual, despite a fund of knowledge and conceptual tools that could be applied. In many regions—New England and the Pacific Northwest, among others—failed management costs more than the receipts from fisheries. This does not suggest that management should be given up as a lost cause, leaving the industry in a free-for-all, although this strategy might, in fact, be cheaper and not much less effective.

Overfishing is devastating fish stocks, the fishing industry has little to no regulation now

Huffington Post 2013 (If We Keep Overfishing, There May Soon Be No Fish Left, The Huffington Post, By Dominique Mosbergen, 12/06/2013 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/06/overfishing-video_n_4393946.html)

A powerful video about how overfishing is decimating our oceans reminds us this week to pause and think twice about the seafood we eat. Created by European environmental coalition OCEAN2012, the video explains that since the advent of large-scale industrial fishing in the 1950s, stocks of large fish -- such as tuna, swordfish, cod and flounder -- are believed to have fallen by as much as 90 percent worldwide. If overfishing continues, some scientists warn that a collapse of all types of fish species may happen in less than 50 years. Governments and consumers have been complicit in this wildly unsustainable industry, the video asserts -- and it's time that we all collectively take responsibility for the harm we've caused marine ecosystems. After first going viral on YouTube last year, the OCEAN2012 video has experienced a surge in interest yet again this week after being shared by Upworthy. Renewed interest in the short film is proof that this issue remains as pressing today as it's ever been. (Story continues below.) fish This infographic, created by OCEAN2012, shows how catches of Bluefin tuna, Atlantic salmon and cod have been plummeting over the last few decades as fish populations collapse. (To see an enlarged version of this graphic, click here.) "The fish don't stand a chance," Greenpeace writes on its website about overfishing. "More often than not, the fishing industry is given access to fish stocks before the impact of their fishing can be assessed, and regulation of the fishing industry is, in any case, woefully inadequate." According to environmental group Food and Water Watch, Atlantic cod, Atlantic flatfish (like halibut, flounder and sole), as well as Atlantic salmon, orange roughly and blue fin tuna are some of the worst fish to consume due to their over-harvested, dwindling populations. Overfishing has caused the stock of blue fin tuna in the Pacific, for instance, to plummet by a whopping 96.4 percent, per a 2013 study on the fish. On the flip side, Food and Water Watch says that fish like yellowtail snapper, black cod, Atlantic mackerel and pole- or troll-caught Alaskan salmon, Pacific albacore tuna or mahi-mahi are better, more sustainable choices for your next meal. (The organization's "Smart Seafood Guide" offers even more ideas for conscientious consumers.)



Pro: Individual Fishing Quotas

Overfishing is on the rise, threatening ecological collapse of ocean resources by 2050



BAI Yang and WANG Ling in College of Law 2014, Shandong University of Technology, Zibo 255049, China, Legal Substance and Prospects of a Fishery Quota, Management System, J. Resour. Ecol. 2014 5 (1) 091-096, EBSCO

Overfishing means that fishing effort is beyond a reasonable level so as to cause fish degradation, catch quality decline, cost increases, poverty and other consequences. It can be reflected by over-investment on fishing boats, fishing nets and other fishing equipment and extension of fishing operation time, that is, too many fishing boats catch too few fishes (Li and Chen 2009). In accordance with statistics, fishing effort has climbed for decades due to competitive overfishing worldwide. Marine fishery catch output increased from 18.5 million tons in 1952 to 89 million tons in 1989, up more than 400%. Annual fish catch has fallen year by year and shows no sign of recovery. According to the latest FAO report, global marine fishing output reached 81.9 million tons in 2006, the third lowest output since 1994 (FAO 2008). As pointed out by the Global Environment Outlook Report, global fishery resources available for commercial fishing may be depleted before 2050 if no practical means of protection are taken (UNEP 2008). Humans must take a practical management approach to deal with such a severe ecological and overfishing crisis and this has indeed become a top priority.

Industry practices like trawling, cyanide, dynamite, and ghost fishing are environmentally destructive and cause irreparable damage to local ecosystems.



World Wildlife Foundation No Date (World Wide Fund for Nature, “Fishing problems: Destructive fishing practices”,http://wwf.panda.org/about_our_earth/blue_planet/problems/problems_fishing/destructive_fishing/, Date Accessed: 063014)

Many fishing practices are extremely destructive to delicate habitats - particularly vital fish breeding grounds like coral reefs and seagrass meadows. For example: Bottom trawling: Industrial trawlers once avoided coral reefs and other rocky regions of the ocean floor because their nets would snag and tear. But the introduction of rockhopper trawls in the 1980s changed this. These trawls are fitted with large rubber tires or rollers that allow the net to pass easily over any rough surface. The largest, with heavy rollers over 75cm in diameter, are very powerful, capable of moving boulders weighing 25 tonnes. Now, most of the ocean floor can be trawled down to a depth of 2,000m. These trawls - whose use is now widespread - are extremely damaging. In an experiment off Alaska, 55% of cold-water coral damaged by one pass of a trawl had not recovered a year later. Scars up to 4km long have been found in the reefs of the north-east Atlantic Ocean. And in heavily fished areas around coral seamounts off southern Australia, 90% of the surfaces where coral used to grow are now bare rock. When covered with marine life, these seabed areas provide habitat for juvenile fish and other species. Like removing forest, removing this cover decreases the area available for marine species to live and thrive in. Cyanide fishing: In this technique, fishers squirt sodium cyanide into the water to stun fish without killing them, making them easy to catch. Cyanide fishing on coral reefs began in the 1960s to supply the international aquarium trade. But since the early 1980s, a much bigger, more profitable business has emerged: supplying live reef fish for the restaurants of Hong Kong, Singapore, and, increasingly, mainland China. Some 20,000 tonnes of live fish are eaten annually in the restaurants of Hong Kong - and for every live fish caught using cyanide, a square metre of their coral reef home is killed. Dynamite fishing: In this technique, dynamite or other explosives are set off under water. The dead fish floating to the surface are then simply scooped up. The explosives completely destroy the underwater environment, leaving it as rubble. Dynamite fishing has contributed to massive destruction of, for example, Southeast Asian coral reefs over the past 20 years. Ghost fishing: Ghost fishing occurs when fishing gear is lost or abandoned at sea. The gear can continue to catch fish, dolphins, whales, turtles, and other creatures as it drifts through the water and after it becomes snagged on the seabed. When driftnets were used on the High Seas, an estimated 1,000km of ghost nets were released each year into the North Pacific Ocean alone. Although the current contribution of ghost fishing to bycatch is unknown, it is likely to have a large impact. One survey estimated that a quarter of the rubbish on the bottom of the North Sea is fishing nets, while fishers speak of a dolphin and turtle graveyard among the nets that drape the cliffs of Cape Wessell, Northern Australia.


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