Sustainability of aquatic creatures

Seafood is one of the worlds popular foods using sea life to create delicious meals such as fish n chips, sushi and clam chowder. But how much longer can we continue to make these types of food without taking in consideration on how much life creatures are left within the ocean?

Abalone is a type of shellfish that is farmed and hunted for. There have been some concerns about them as they cause environmental damage and transmit diseases when they lay eggs. The abalone industry is keeping a close look on this and are trying to keep farmed abalone and wild abalone separated and the production number consistent.

The bass is a type of fish that is different in other locations. The Atlantic contains a special type of bass, it is a hybrid between a striped bass and white bass in hopes of creating a better and stronger bass that is resistant to diseases. There have been slight concerns when maintaining farmed bass but as it requires a decent amount of protein to keep them fed, but it doesn’t compare to the extensive amounts that is required to feed salmon. Bass are usually farmed away from open waters to prevent an easy escape and to prevent the potential spread of diseases.

Snow crabs are a type of fish that was discovered in the 1960s. traps are placed at the bottom of the sea floor and crabs would be tricked in going inside of them, there haven’t been reports where this may damage the habitat but it does damage sensitive fishing areas; traps are now heavily modified to which will limit the trap to a certain degree. Snow crabs are neither over fished or endangered.

King crabs were also discovered in the 1960s but by the soviets. Currently king crabs are an invasive species. They have been causing damage to the ecosystem and are currently being hunted in hopes to reduce their population. Norway has made a law where the farming of king crabs (especially females) will be encouraged.

Cods have been fished in some locations for roughly 400 years. They were exploited during their time seeing they were high in numbers. Newfoundland has been permitted to begin farming cod since 2007 due to ineffective management. BC however have been overfishng cod in hopes to sustain a better economy, the main exports are China and Russia. In the US, cod are cod and eaten, they aren’t sold to other countries as they have Canada to do that for them. The Americans seem to have troubles maintaining their cod supply as cod are caught alongside with groundfish, and groundfish are heavily overfished in America, they are usually found in sensitive habitats which the Americans are still fishing from.

What direction should the BC forest industry take?

Economy is a big thing that keeps a country going, and depending in where the country is located they need to make use of their surroundings in order to sustain their economy to keep the country moving forward.

Canada should take in consideration of the future ahead when selling and exporting their logs to other countries, if the country’s supply of forests are getting low or crucially low then the rate at which they are cut down should be shortened and the amount of seedlings that are planted should be increased. Some places in Canada isn’t ideal to carry future trees, but people should take advantage as all the flat land that currently exist.

Of course the north would be a difficult place to start growing trees due to the weather but in the mainland, if its possible to slow down production and focus on keeping the future trees that can be potential logs or lumber.

countries that are in higher demand should still be able to purchase lumber, the United States seems well developed but in other countries like China where they are still developing should still receive lumber, pulp and logs from Canada.

Another idea is that, we should guess and estimate how much lumber Canada would have in the year X and take stronger action to look and take care of the remaining forests that exist.