Can we please have a global moratorium on all fishing for a few years? We are fishing the seas empty. I'm more than happy to pay for my share of the unsold/uncaught fish. This is such a disheartening example of the tragedy of the commons.
No, that would be an over reaction that will harm more than it helps. Controls are important but stop all legal fishing is not the answer.
We've already done damage that's difficult to even comprehend. There's dead zones all over the map, where there's nothing but a bunch of algae and isopods crawling around in the mud and bones on the sea floor. These are enormous amounts of surface area, but they also represent a huge depth, so it's actually a volume of completely ruined wilderness. It's many, many times worse than an equivalent amount of acreage on land turned barren. We don't really have the daily context to understand what a loss that is. If we cause a collapse of the ocean ecosystems, we are truly and fully ruined.
People like to think that rational responses to situations are always moderate and level-headed, but that depends on context. The rational response to what's happening in this context is to freak the fuck out. Literally any sacrifice is going to be worth averting this kind of catastrophe. We are quite literally like the frog which is slowly boiling in the pot; we are slowly boiling ourselves, but it's a generational process so nobody ever thinks it's time for drastic measures. We're not looking at a choice between winning or losing; we're looking at the difference between extinction and cataclysm. The choice between a death toll of merely hundreds of millions vs. billions. It's extremely likely that this situation is going to end both of our family lines at some point in the next several generations. It's awful, but unless we figure out time travel these are the choices we have.