Ghost Nets
When a person sits down to a fish curry or a portion of fish and chips, they rarely think of where that fish comes from. We rarely realize that when we consume fish, we are eating the last truly wild caught meat on the planet, our ancient role as hunters reprised in the role of modern day fishermen. Of course the new age fishermen are a far cry from what they were centuries or even decades ago. With engines, mechanization, longlines that stretch for kilometers with thousands of hooks and nets that could engulf the Empire State Building, the fisheries industry has become almost unrecognizable as has sadly our oceans, rapidly depleted and overfished what we see in our seas now appears to be but a sad remnant of the abundance that was there decades ago. Our surface interval chats with Uncle Sumathi used to really bring this home, 56 years old, he had seen foreign trawlers come and rape the seas off Colombo, taking so much fish that the numbers have never recovered. Apparently the local f