Overexploitation

More resources are needed in this time of exponential population growth: more people need more nourishment and more resources to survive. This, unfortunately, can bring about the overexploitation of marine resources, leading to the depletion of species native and unique to the Mediterranean. Several studies have been conducted on overfishing and marine life, showing that a wide variety of species have concurred a significant loss in their population levels (IUCN). This also has an indirect effect on predatory species, which are concurrently lacking nourishment and resources to survive. This creates a circular issue:there is an external threat that endangers a species, which in turn affects multiple others, ultimately creating a dangerous imbalance in the ecosystem and environmental changes (Bearzi, Politi, Agazzi and Azzellino, 2005). This creates urgency to intervene and stop overexploitation of marine species, so to preserve the health of the Mediterranean and the populations that rely on it to survive. At the same time, recent studies have found that fisheries in the Mediterranean and Black seas are reaching unsustainable levels of exploitation (Tsikliras, Dinouli, And Tsalkou, 2013). It is thus essential to control these patterns of consumerist behaviour from depleting the marine populations to the point of no return.

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