Please sign and share this petition worldwide in order to ask the organization, Oceana.Org and the Fish & Wildlife Services to work together to create laws and regulations that require all fishermen be properly equipped. Many fish are caught annually in deep waters that must be released back into the waters but despite delicate handling, many of these fish get a condition known as barotrauma or "the bends." If fishermen are equipped with descending devices that returns the fish quickly back to the deep waters, the fish can be sent back to their deep sea habitat more quickly and more safely, avoiding the bends.
Recent studies have culminated in fish being caught that apparently are from the deep waters and suffer with a condition known as barotrauma or "the bends" as fishermen name it. What happens, according to the reports is that, problems occur in fish that have a swim bladder, an internal balloon that helps them control their buoyancy. When a fish is pulled up, "that balloon rapidly begins to expand as the pressure from the water decreases." As the deep-sea fish reaches the water's surface, "its eyes could be popped out of its head, its stomach is pushed out of its mouth and it looks absolutely horrific." The fish are unable to swim and appear dead even though they are not.
Experiments show that these deep-water fish could survive a trip to the surface if fishermen developed a way to send them back down very quickly into the water, through specific types of descending devices. Current fishing practices is putting a lot of these fish in peril unless it is mandatory that all fishermen be required to learn the use of these devices and have a descending device before any sport fishing that can affect the deep-sea fish. Help us in our efforts to protect these fish of the deep by signing and sharing this petition worldwide on all your media sites. More on the organization that protects the oceans and the life within can be found at
http://oceana.org/en/policy/laws-protecting-the-oceans
Oceana.org and Fish & Wildlife Service's - Create some specific laws that will require all fishermen to have descending devices when going out to fish. These fishermen need to be educated on "the bends", how to use descending devices and not be licensed unless they use these devices before going out onto the oceans to fish!
