Photo courtesy of: The Daily Mail

A recent post on the Science Magazine news blog repeats a comment by Elliot Norse of the Marine Conservation Biology Institute. Regarding deep sea fisheries, Dr. Norse says:

“A population of fish is like a bank account, and its productivity is like the interest it earns. In shallow waters, fish reproduce quickly, and populations would tend to expand 10% annually if not checked by mortality, so they can be profitably harvested year after year. It’s like spending the interest from your savings account

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Many of the world’s fish stocks are currently over-exploited and some, such as Canada’s Atlantic cod, have collapsed completely without much hope for renewal. There are many reasons why these stocks are in decline, however, there is one major factor that we have direct control over, yet fail to take action — government subsidies.

The harmful effects of subsidizing fishing fleets is most apparent in deep sea fisheries, such as for the orange roughy pictured above. Deep sea fishing is costly and, therefore, the profit margins are often quite narrow. In fact, if it weren’t for…