[Previous entry: "PEOPLE OF THE SEA ......TV documentary celebs Ben and Lynn"] [Next entry: "JUST FOR FUN .......Wally Muller's walking gear."]
11/07/2004: "MARINE ECOLOGY ..........the hidden 'price' of wild prawns"
Fishermen have a tough time catching prawns for the barbeque. A aweful lot of other stuff comes up in the nets. Some goes to market, (crabs, lobster) most becomes food for other sharks, dolphins and even prawns missed by the net. It's a cycle. The underwater dammage is to weeds or corals and over-turned rocks that would form shelter or a home for something smaller. The exotic sea pen would be a rare item today.
Wild or ocean-netted prawns are now widely recognised as more tasty and healthier to eat than the farmed versions (all containing antibiotics which build-up and create serious problems).
But eating regular prawn and lobster meat will not do you much good in the long term. Start saving for an artificial hip (or two) and trust you don't pick-up golden staph (MRSA) during the process.
So is eating prawns and lobster such a good idea? My reliable source of information says don't!
OK what about the well-meaning folk who contribute to the 'save the sea marine causes', do these people inadvertantly contribute to the imbalance of the sea by eating prawns without realising the background to their harvest? Of course they do.
One would think more prawn farms would be the answer, but this is not so. There are problems with the discharged waters killing mangroves and causing worse problems than what the trawlers have done.
Do you, as a supporters of the 'save the sea' have time to understand that at your dinner parties and in restaurants, while 'the chat' may drift lightly to conservation causes, your simple ordering of prawns from the menu has many implications both positive (for the fishermen) and negative (for the sea).
Well meaning marine conservationists may not realise 90% to even 99% of the bi-catch (aka 'waste') brought up with each net 'shot' contains a lot of other things besides prawns. Try and spot the few prawns in the picture. Some are visible. This is every night aboard the hundreds of trawlers working the coast. But their numbers are being reduced with a buy-back of licenses.
Sadly all this shocking waste has been accepted as necessary for far too long. There is nothing much anyone can do about slowing it down either. But if you order prawns remember, if you eat prawns, you are part of a slow death of the sea and far from a blemish-free conservationist.
If you really care for our future marine world think twice. (Once for your family's future health; twice for the bi-catch and other inhabitants of the depths having some merit to exist also).
The shocking truth is: Humans find changing any habit, even in the face of survival information, a difficult effort.
Wild prawns will continue to be netted and cooked. "The sea floor is already ruined"said John Barlow, a former Sydney diver and former trawlerman from Burnett Heads near Bundaberg, Queensland. "They are just farming it now".
Footnote: As the bi-catch was being sorted and slid steadily back over the side behind the streaming trawler, several dolphin arrived to feed. They were fussy, accepting some things - and in an impressive split-second decision, rejecting inferior material. The deckhand and I witnessed, under the bright-as-day lights illuminating the waters nearby, a three-meter whaler shark, (feeding on the bi-catch alongside the dolphin), suddenly take a BIG SNAP, a mouthful of flesh from an adult dolphin's side! This says something about the unpredictability of a shark. They don't have many friends.
