Our seas are being emptied of fish at an alarming rate. Industrial fishing processes are extremely profitable, but are highly destructive and wasteful. Globally 75% of commercial fish stocks are over-exploited and close to collapse.

More on this and that over a fifth of all fish caught are killed and discarded.

In the UK, we consume £1.8 billion worth of seafood annually. Greenpeace investigated UK supermarkets and ASDA came in at the bottom, while Tesco and Morrisons also fared poorly, revealing that Britain's biggest retailers are responsible for the destruction of fish stocks. Marks & Spencer and Waitrose top the scorecard thanks to their implemented sustainable seafood policies, but nearly all of the UK's major supermarkets are selling endangered and threatened varieties of fish.

 
Read more about the campaign to get supermarkets to face up to their responsibilities and adopted sustainable seafood policies:
http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/asda

 

 

Bycatch

 
The first comprehensive study of "bycatch" - unwanted fish caught and discarded by commercial fishing operations - has confirmed the worst fears of conservationists: over a fifth of all fish caught by U.S. commercial fishers, around 1.1 million tons, are tossed out every year. Commissioned by marine eco-group Oceana, the study analyzed federal data between 1991 and 2002 to find the most and least efficient fisheries. Topping the study's list of bad actors are shrimp operations in the Gulf of Mexico, whose huge trawling nets were responsible for about half of the nation's bycatch in 2002. By contrast, Alaska fisheries have made notable progress in reducing waste. Needless to say, catching and scrapping millions of tons of fish hampers efforts to restore ailing fish stocks. "The scale of the problem here is enormous," says one of the study's authors.

Read article: The Washington Post, Juliet Eilperin, 01 Dec 2005

Deep sea fish face extinction

Records of catches logged by trawlers operating in the North Atlantic from 1978 to 1994 show that at least five species of deep sea fish are at such low levels that they qualify for the World Conservation Union's critically endangered list. The research, published in the journal Nature, adds weight to demands by conservationists for the creation of internationally protected reserves to place vast areas of the deep seas out of bounds to fisheries.

· Species netted by accident play key role in ecosystem
· Call to put vast areas out of bounds to trawlers

http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/news/story/0,,1678032,00.html