I get that they are trapped in the cycle of overfishing, but it seems like cutting back on the pollution is a first step everybody could take.
Just a simple tragedy of the commons I guess. The obvious steps towards sustainable fishing involves either higher cost or lower yields in the short-medium term. The few who would be willing to would go out of business. Since fish don't generally respect borders, the same dilemma occurs even between countries. If you voluntary give up your yield, other countries get more.
The only way I know to solve this is to properly price externalities, Milton Friedman style.
We had massive glass sponge reefs. They were destroyed by trawlers. That’s prohibited now. I suppose we’re expected to believe the industry wouldn’t be trawling today if they were allowed to, but I don’t buy it. Although the glass sponges were nurseries for untold millions of fish and their prey, and those stocks are so incredibly depleted and unable to recover, they still fish every single bit of quota they can and fight tooth and nail to increase quotas. Many complain that they aren’t allowed to trawl, too.
I suppose what it comes down to is that everyone thinks they are the exception. Even our meat eating practices on land are so resource intensive and absurd, but no one things they are complicit in an activity like what we’re seeing with fishing. None of this is sustainable, but we’re all participating and all very sure it’s someone else’s fault.
Really, sustainable fishing at our population scale seems like an absurd notion.
Once an area is destroyed in this fashion there isn't much future for fish or fishermen. Fishermen can continue to fish or not, but without a healthy ocean floor the fish won't reproduce, the nurseries won't be there, and parasites/diseases will wreck the remaining population for decades. The best society can do is to help fishermen to move to a different profession and turn the harbor into apartments.