Saltwater fish
Common human-induced threats include overfishing, pollution, habitat loss and destruction, climate change and invasive species.
With the human population growing at an exponential rate, these threats are likely to continue to be prevalent in marine ecosystems.
[7] Although it provides many people with a source of food, the global seafood market is a major threat to the biodiversity of fishes.
Bycatch is a direct effect of overfishing and is defined as the unwanted capture of different marine organisms during industrial fishing.
[8] The Mesopredator release hypothesis is one of the indirect effects of overfishing that is also often referred to as "fishing down the food web".
[9] This impacts the food web in marine environments and disrupts the balance of the ecosystem and is likely to cause trophic cascades.
According to the IUCN Red List, the oceanic whitetip shark is considered critically endangered because of its value in the seafood market.
Due to its low fat content and dense white flesh, this fish is a popular choice among humans.
Now considered vulnerable,[12] its populations have both decreased in abundance and their distribution has shifted from northern to southern areas due to overfishing.
[13] Aquaculture is defined as the farming of aquatic organisms in controlled environments for the purpose of providing food and resources for humans.
[14] There is a lot of debate on whether or not aquaculture is an environmentally sustainable practice, yet the socioeconomic benefits that humans receive is tough to argue against.
The main impacts of cage aquaculture are reduced water quality from fish sewage, high potential of genetic pollution of wild stocks due to escapees from aquaculture cages[15] and the possibility of introducing an invasive species if the fish being reared are non-native .
For example, there are many scientific papers that have examined the effects of Atlantic Salmon escaping from their enclosures and interacting with wild populations.
This would result in the reduction of fitness related traits that wild stocks possess which is a serious threat to these populations.
