Yet many see fish as a renewable harvestable resource like wheat rather than species that may become endangered like the panda or tiger. 2 Modern fishing fleets have been able to track down the scarcest of fish and haul them up. These nets take a lot more than the species that are sold. Each year 27 million tons of fish are killed and thrown overboard, a wasteful practice referred to as bycatch. Don't blame nature More and more evidence is shifting blame away from nature for mysterious fish kills.
Chances are that farm animals are to blame.
In 1992, US researcher JoAnn Burkholder found a previously unseen fish-eating organism, called Pfiesteria, in North Carolina s waters. Three years later, Pfiesteria resurfaced to devastate local fisheries. Pfiesteria belongs to a prehistoric group of algae that is part plant, part animal. One of the most intriguing things about Pfiesteria is that if we don t have fish available it will eat everything from bacteria to dead plant and animal remains all the way up to mammalian tissues. After JoAnn s research partner Howard Glasgow was almost killed by Pfiesteria, they realized people too were not immune from the algae.