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Friday 8 July 2011

Jellyfish Rule! - has this man found the Truth?


Has this man just witnessed the beginning of the end of vertebrate ecology?

Last year I began to wonder, this year doubt is seeping away, to be replaced with a rising fear. Could it really have happened? Could the fishing industry have achieved the remarkable feat of destroying the last great stock?

Until 2010, mackerel were the one reliable catch in Cardigan Bay in west Wales. Though I took to the water dozens of times, there wasn't a day in 2008 or 2009 when I failed to take 10 or more. Once every three or four trips I would hit a major shoal, and bring in 100 or 200 fish: enough, across the season, to fill the freezer and supply much of our protein for the year. Those were thrilling moments: pulling up strings of fish amid whirling flocks of shearwaters, gannets pluming into the water beside my kayak, dolphins breaching and blowing. It was, or so it seemed, the most sustainable of all the easy means of harvesting animal protein.

Read the rest of George Monbiot's blog article that featured in the Guardian Online today - here - but be sure to read the comments (85 at the last count) at the foot of the article - from the well informed to the well intentioned to the ill-informed to the dismissive and merely trivial - but starting with - "correlation is not causation" - exactly so iamtheurbanspaceman!