The USA regularly dumps over a billion dollars' worth of perfectly edible fish each year.
In its report, Oceana estimated the value of certain kinds of fish using the volume discard and the market price of a specific species. In the Southeast U.S. in 2010, fisheries tossed out $45 million in sea trout, $27 million in red snapper, $4.2 million in king mackerel, and $3.4 million in bluefin tuna. Every year, fisheries in the New England and the Mid-Atlantic region chuck more than $20 million in sea scallops, $13.5 million in flounder, and $7 million in monkfish. In Alaska, fishermen throw out Pacific halibut, cod, and snow and red king crabs when they don't have to meet catch quotas for those species. In California, Oregon, and Washington, fisheries regularly toss spiny lobster, rockfish, and sea bass.
It's not only wasteful, it accelerates the decline in fish populations. We don't actually have an over-fishing problem; what we have is an overthrowing problem. And it stems primarily from an over-regulation problem.
As has so often been demonstrated, government doesn't solve the problem; government is the problem.
