No, this is actually a terrible thing in the long run for one simple reason: fisheries are being destroyed everywhere [1], and the US is the only nation currently with the clout to really push to change this. But since seafood isn't even on most Americans' radar and we live in a democracy, it's very unlikely any politician will ever spend political capital on it.
Fisheries are being destroyed is because blue water fisheries are a commons -- no nations own them, so whoever vacuums up the fish first reap the profits. Not to mention global warming and ocean acidification are stressing fish breeding grounds worldwide.
This model made sense up until WW2, and was in line with how international waters were historically governed, but it is an ecological disaster in the making because technological developments during the war (sonar, deep sea nets, etc.) allowed huge fishing fleets to completely destroy blue water fishing grounds.
The only way to change this is for someone to push at the international level to rewrite the agreements on fisheries (restrict them by quotas, manage them by an international body with an eye towards conservation, etc.), and the only superpower that has the political capital to really get the ball rolling is the US.
But most Americans don't eat much seafood so it's not on anyone's radar. Enjoy your seafood while you still can. Maybe rich nations will have farmed fish or domestic freshwater sources, but cheap seafood from the ocean will basically not exist within a few decades.
I don't really like getting into political arguments, but I'd like to point out that the US is not really that much more forward looking than other nations wrt fishery conservation. They, after all, increased quotas for pacific salmon fishing that decimated the Canadian fisheries for years. Why? In retaliation for the unsustainable Canadian softwood lumber prices (that were shutting down all the US mills). It's politics all the way down, unfortunately.
I do agree that we need international level agreements, but I trust the US exactly the same as I trust most other governments on this issue. I think one of the biggest problems is that it's a bit like global warming. Most people simply deny that there's a problem. In fish-loving Japan, where I live, nobody will listen to me. They sell cod illegally fished from the grand banks in the super market. They even have a big sign "Grand Banks Cod!!!" I think if I brought an east cost Canadian fisherman to Japan, they'd go postal. But, if I try to educate someone, the response is always, "It has to be a lie. Look at all the cheap fish in the super market. If it was really getting scarce, then there would be no fish there. People in other parts of the world just want to complain about the Japanese. That's all it is".
If the US was a fish eating nation, I have very little doubt that the same thing would be happening, unfortunately.
My supervisor at university did fish population simulations as his research. He published a paper, maybe 30 years ago now, where he predicted the collapse of all wild fisheries. Nobody paid any attention to it. It seems to be on track now...
When I read "the US is the only nation currently with the clout to really push to change this", I don't interpret that to mean the US is/would be more sensible about protecting fisheries. It sounds to me like smallnamespace is proposing that there's a coordination problem--tragedy of the commons/prisoners dilemma, I would assume--and you need one big pushy guy to insist we all follow sensible rules.
You don't need an especially socially responsible or forward-thinking entity to solve coordination problems. You just need one that's able to push hard enough to make everyone fall in line.
Something like the UN/WTO would ideally serve that purpose, but seems like no one wants to give them much clout. I assume the big people prefer to keep the clout in their complete control and the small guys know the big guys would still have stuff like permanent seats and veto power.
Because the fish can't be stored very economically once you harvest them, the cheapness of fish now is due to overfishing, and directly contributes to future scarcity.
Strangely, the best place to 'store' fish is right in the ocean, and for an overly harvested fishery, you even get paid interest for it.
But if there is too much fish taken away, then it is harder to catch them, right, so scarcity. But the remaining fish then have much more space and food to reproduce ... so they go ack to the old levels quickly, so where is the problem (unless some species go literally extinct)?
You're right that at carrying capacity, the limiting factor is food and space.
But most of our fisheries are far below that now. Fish can only breed as fast as there are breeding fish available, but we're eating them faster than they are being born.
You can view a fishery basically as a giant fish-making factory. If you eat away half your fishery's biomass, then to a very rough first approximation, your factory will only produce half as many fish.
One reason is that many governments are essentially paying people to take fish out of the ocean [1], to the tune of tens of billions a year. Japan, China, and Taiwan are some of the main players. They do it to keep fishermen employed.
Related to this: because technological change has made it really cheap and easy to catch fish [2], and up to now, that has more than offset the decreased productivity from damaging our fisheries.
They don't go back to "the old levels" because once the numbers recover even a small amount it becomes profitable to knock them right back down. You reach an equilibrium at a much smaller amount of fish in the wild than you could have had with proper management. Fish prices are higher, but fisherman catch fewer per day, so nobody wins.
Can we really stop China and Japan from hoovering up fish and whales? Historically we have not had much success.
Also why should America have to be the fish police, on top of all the other polices we are. What if I would rather spend the fish police money on universal healthcare and free college tuition for fellow Americans?
I'm not making a moral case that America should police the seas, but simply pointing out the practical reality that the US Navy actually does control them, and hence we're the natural party to propose and also enforce any agreement.
The truth is that if the US does nothing, mass fishery collapse is the most probable outcome. It will hurt poor, seafood-consuming nations much more than it hurts the US.
Is this more important than any of our other priorities? That's up for you to decide.
America should be helping fight for a world where we don't need fish police. In other words, we should encourage governments that naturally want to act in a reasonable, secular-based manner.
Fisheries are being destroyed is because blue water fisheries are a commons -- no nations own them, so whoever vacuums up the fish first reap the profits. Not to mention global warming and ocean acidification are stressing fish breeding grounds worldwide.
This model made sense up until WW2, and was in line with how international waters were historically governed, but it is an ecological disaster in the making because technological developments during the war (sonar, deep sea nets, etc.) allowed huge fishing fleets to completely destroy blue water fishing grounds.
The only way to change this is for someone to push at the international level to rewrite the agreements on fisheries (restrict them by quotas, manage them by an international body with an eye towards conservation, etc.), and the only superpower that has the political capital to really get the ball rolling is the US.
But most Americans don't eat much seafood so it's not on anyone's radar. Enjoy your seafood while you still can. Maybe rich nations will have farmed fish or domestic freshwater sources, but cheap seafood from the ocean will basically not exist within a few decades.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jul/07/global-f...