Post #2372530

Okay, okay. This is probably something most people don't care about - but I think it's interesting and am subjecting yall to my mutterings. Biology ramble incoming. So. Fishing. One of the things that has been affecting it through history is the fact that continued fishing over a wide enough area will result in decreasing fish sizes. This makes sense. Take the larger fishes to eat, leave the smaller ones because they're useless and the population of fish will slowly evolve to become smaller as those phenotypes survive more often. However. There is actually another (much less noticeable) reason shrinking fish sizes occurs. You see, mass predation - such as from *commercial* fishing - will cause shrinking. This, fascinatingly enough, is because it becomes advantageous to reproduce early, and not put as much energy into growth. So, you get smaller fish irrelevant of what you're actually taking.