Aquaculture is nearly as ancient as farming. Today, the ability to raise and farm seafood species in a controlled environment is as new, spirited and promising as the computer industry. It promises and delivers substantial quantities of fin and shellfish to the world food supply. Each pound or ton raised via aquaculture relieves three to five times that much pressure on the wild when you factor in such added stresses as by-catch. Yet, aquaculture is not without its problems and its critics, a topic that will be addressed later in this paper. But, again, my primary reason for bringing up aquaculture is that it is a factor that must be scrutinized in any survey of factors concerning and affecting commercial fisheries. 

The long and the short of the situation now facing the world's commercial fisheries is that for far too long, the lack of self or government regulation has fostered a totally unrealistic spirit of complacency to settle over fishermen, their communities, the public and government policy makers. As catches diminished, fishermen raised the alarm and governments simply sought ways to eliminate competing nations from getting the remaining supply of seafood before their fleets could. Some call it greed. Some call it ignorance. Some understand that decisions made without sound data are decisions, more often than not, that are ineffective and largely irrelevant.

Even the best management regimes now in place are the subject of intense criticism and skepticism from within and without fisheries and fishing communities. They are considered either based on politics versus science and experience or too restrictive, or too little too late. The fact of the matter is marine resources have taken quite a beating from all sectors. Many stocks are overfished. Many are depleted. Many are on the verge of depletion.

Even with the best management policies in place at the national and international levels, the state of commercial fishing today can be best characterized as "vulnerable." 

That vulnerability comes in many guises. It is a vulnerability based, in part, on the idea that fish stocks will not be able to sustain fishing pressure in the future. It is a vulnerability, based in part, on weak science. It is a vulnerability to the distinct possibility and, in many cases, fact that many regulatory policies, based on that weak scientific data or even court decisions formulated by judges lacking any scientific basis whatsoever, place the burden of blame on fishing communities without considering any of the multitude of other contributing factors. It is a vulnerability to interests within and outside of the fishing sector that are pressing for agendas diametrically opposed to enacting any policy that restores health to commercial fishing or even to the marine resources themselves. 

This last vulnerability may well be the most critical. Critical in the sense that it could, if allowed to operate unchallenged, result in a deadly and disastrous affect on fisheries everywhere. Here I am speaking of the so-called and very much self-styled environmental watchdogs like Greenpeace, Environmental Defense and a legion of others.