Fishing
Once,
people who lived near lakes, rivers and the sea
often depended on fishing for much of their food.
Today, most small fishermen who just catch enough
fish for themselves with some left over to sell
locally, have lost their jobs. Why? Because humans
always want more and more of everything. They’ve
built big ships which can catch millions of fish
in just a few days so there aren’t enough
left to breed and make baby fish. No baby fish
means no new adult fish… which soon means
no fish at all! And because of the pollution from
chemicals from farming and factories – which
gets into the rivers and then the seas – many
fish are either not able to breed or contain so
much pollution themselves that they are not good
to eat any more. This is very sad because fish
are yummy and the oily ones are very healthy for
people and penguins to eat… or were.

I've made another guide all about pollution. Take
a look to find out what's going on.
Some
people have found that they can farm
fish too. This seems like a good idea until
you find that they too use poisons on the fish
to stop diseases which only start because the
fish are kept close together in tanks or floating
net cages in the sea.
Of
course, not everything that comes out of the sea
is a fish. People catch lots of animals like squids
(I like those!) and octopuses, shellfish, crabs
and lobsters. Some people farm prawns in big open
ponds along tropical coasts, once protected by
mangrove trees. The ponds for the prawns meant
the mangroves were destroyed. This can be very
bad because when big storms happen,
the coast isn’t protected any more.
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