Are fishes evolving?

Question

As far as I know, Fishing has been one of the important occupation since early ages, and infinite number of fishes have already been captured.

As the time passes, they must've developed some sort of knowledge about the fish-nets, and should've figured out a way to escape from them. But, still now, we are able to capture them at the same rate(I guess)

So, Are they developing any sort of hereditary memory to escape from us?

P.S. I'm not sure whether this is the right SE to ask.

"No hereditary memory involved"? How can we say that for sure? — Snazzy Sanoj, Dec 19 '15 at 05:41
Pretty much the same reason we don't think the fish are developing psychic powers. There's no evidence for it, the mechanisms by which evolution is known to operate wouldn't produce such a thing, and it wouldn't explain any observed phenomena better than the existing explanations. — user2357112, Dec 19 '15 at 07:11
No, what I meant was that fish should've developed some sort of hereditary memory that we're one of Predators, atleast when they saw fellow fish being captured by us, and should've learned to tackle the "fish-nets"(or whatever). But, this isn't happening even after 40,000 years. Why? — Snazzy Sanoj, Dec 19 '15 at 07:28
Evolution just doesn't work like that. Here, have a link to an explanation of how it does work. — user2357112, Dec 19 '15 at 07:44
How's this hypothesis @user2357112 - the effect of man's overfishing is to catch shoals and individual fish that are easier to catch. Therefore the more reclusive/cautious fish survive, which means those characteristics are passed one. I'd say that would be a reasonable approximation of inherited memory. — geotheory, Dec 19 '15 at 09:42
@geotheory that's not a hereditary memory, that's an acquired trait. — Will Ness, Dec 19 '15 at 13:02
I don't think its necessarily very different from cats fearing cucumbers - possibly an inherited fear of snakes. — geotheory, Dec 19 '15 at 13:11
I'd be curious to see an answer that addresses indirect pressure through habitat change, like what happened with pigeons and highways. — shadowtalker, Dec 19 '15 at 16:00
Yet another question that underestimates the length of evolutionary timesceles compared to industrialisation of people. — James, Aug 04 '16 at 04:30

score 14 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 18 '15 at 19:36

14

Fish are definitely evolving to avoid fishing pressure. For example, largemouth bass evolve toward avoiding hooks. More broadly, since fishing selectively removes larger fish from the population, there's selection toward fish evolving smaller size. A brief review, linking to many studies demonstrating this, is Evolutionary impacts of fishing: overfishing's ‘Darwinian debt’.

answered Dec 18 '15 at 19:36

iayork

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I would disagree with the phrasing "to avoid" and replace it with "in response to". The old adage about evolution not assuming a purpose applies here. – kmm Dec 18 '15 at 19:40
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"in response to" implies a purpose as much as "to avoid" from my point of view. I'd rather use "as a consequence of". – Anonymous Coward Dec 19 '15 at 14:06
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I understand the urge to avoid teleological words, but I think it's pointless and futile to worry about it once we're actually discussing real evolution. I realize that it's hammered into students at the very early introductory stage, but once the concept that there's no goal to evolution is solid -- which should be about a week after natural selection is first mentioned -- it simply becomes an exercise in semantics. If you read actual papers by actual evolutionary biologists, they pretty much all use shorthand language like this. We're all grownups here. – iayork Dec 19 '15 at 17:12
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@iayork: I don't think it's safe to assume the questioner is past that very early introductory stage. Even if they are, this answer will probably be read by people who aren't past that stage. – user2357112 Dec 20 '15 at 03:26

Are fishes evolving?

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