company can also sell trawl catcher-processors that cannot provide tender, tourist, or research services to acquire additional capital. During the development of these boats, Trident Seafoods will train the remaining employees to operate them. The employees who worked aboard purse seiners in the past will lead the training to ensure a successful transition. After Trident Seafoods finishes constructing its
practice. The company’s effort to transition away from bottom trawling will benefit the fight to reduce the harmful practice; however, it will require collective action from the global seafood industry to prompt sufficient change. Moreover, many employees and shareholders may initially resist the change for the sake of greater comfort and short-term returns. Several employees who worked aboard
Coral destroyed by bottom trawling new purse seining vessels, it can immediately begin fishing with newly trained employees and ensure it continues to meet demand. The company can then provide greater returns to its shareholders with this plan as it earns larger profits by reducing expenses. As a result, Trident Seafoods can create significant value for its investors, employees, and the environment through this approach while increasing its profitability and substantially reducing its bottom trawl usage.
POTENTIAL DRAWBACKS
Although this approach will provide value to stakeholders, increase profitability, and reduce Trident Seafoods' trawling efforts, it is not a global solution to the unsustainable
bottom trawlers throughout their careers, for example, may not comply with the transition to purse seining. Likewise, investors may be skeptical of the high up-front costs of developing a new purse seiner fleet as it would initially produce smaller returns. Despite these criticisms, transitioning away from bottom trawling is necessary. The inherent unsustainability of this practice will prompt the government to stop providing subsidies to fishing businesses in the foreseeable future. Without this funding, “the bulk of the world’s bottom trawl fleet operating in the high seas will be operating at a loss, and unable to fish.”17 Thus, Trident Seafoods must shift away from bottom trawling; otherwise, employees will lose more jobs, investors will
lose more money, and the environment will suffer more irreversible damage.
LOOKING FORWARD
Currently, the United Nations’ goal to “conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development” by 2030 is not feasible. 18 However, through Trident Seafoods’ transition to purse seining, there would be substantial progress towards a future in which society uses the world’s oceans sustainably. And it must not stop there. As the success of this approach becomes increasingly apparent in the global seafood industry, Trident Seafoods’ actions should motivate other companies to transition away from bottom trawling. Now, other companies around the world can improve this approach to be even more sustainable and profitable. Then, innocent animals will no longer die from wasteful bottom trawling. Fishing companies will no longer rely upon government subsidies to ensure their profitability. Most importantly, the ocean and the marine life that society depends upon will no longer suffer at the hands of a destructive fishing practice. Off the coast of Alaska’s Aleutian Islands, former bottom trawling fishermen now hoist their nets up to only find their target fish. Along the northern Gulf of Alaska, miles of coral beds gradually heal as purse seine nets never touch the seafloor. In Southeast Alaska, fishermen now emit significantly less aqueous carbon dioxide into the region’s pristine waters as they only need to travel a mile to fish. These effects can be common throughout all regions where commercial fishing occurs. This industry does not need to be wasteful. It can be sustainable, profitable, and environmentally supportive. This is the future the seafood industry needs, and more importantly, this is the future our precious oceans deserve.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS 1.
What actions can be taken to prompt a global movement towards more sustainable fishing practices?
2.
Do you agree that the solution for limiting bottom trawling should come from individual businesses and not from the government? Why or why not?
46 / ERIC HALHJEM