Do we believe this?

No more Fish in the Sea infographic by GOOD.

Artisanal Fishermen Congress Europe - a way forward

Small-scale fishing vessels account for 80% of Europe's fishing sector, but as the vast majority of fishing quotas and EU subsidies have favoured industrial fishing operations, which have in many cases accelerated the depletion of fish stocks and environmental damage to our seas, the voices of small scale fishermen have largely been ignored.

Over 60% of European fish stocks are over-exploited  Now, small-scale fishermen from across Europe are joining forces to put sustainable, artisanal and low-impact fishing at the heart of the on-going reform of European Union (EU) Common Fisheries Policy (CFP). 

Read one highly sceptical fisherman's road to Damascus conversion account of the trip!

Q&A: Eat that fish! When overfishing is also sustainable

Many of us think that if a fish species is overfished we probably should be wary about choosing it at the supermarket or on the restaurant menu. But the opposite may be true. Our boycotting of some overfished species may be hurting us and the American fish industry, not the fish. This counterintuitive opinion is laid out by Ray Hilborn, professor of aquatic and fishery sciences at the University of Washington, and co-author of Overfishing: What Everyone Needs to Know. Hilborn holds that the public, food retailers, NGOs and congress have misunderstood what defines a sustainable fishery. In fact overfishing and sustainable can, oddly enough, go together. SmartPlanet caught up with Hilborn in Seattle, WA to get a better understanding of this paradox and why he thinks a fish boycott doesn’t make sense. 


 SmartPlanet: What are red listed fish? Ray Hilborn: Red lists are advice that a number of NGOs provide on what species of fish one should avoid eating. 


 SP: And Whole Foods stopped selling such fish based on these red lists? RH: Yes Whole Foods made a commitment to not sell any food that’s on the red list of the Monterey Bay Aquarium and the Blue Oceans Institute. 


 SP: And other stores and restaurants have done similar things? RH: Yes red lists are widely used. 


 SP: What are the criteria for red-listed fish? RH: The three criteria that most NGOs use. One is status with respect to overfishing. The second is concerns about bycatch. So if you have a fishery that is catching a significant number of turtles, or sharks, or other species they’ll often get red-listed. Finally there are concerns about the environmental impacts of fishing, particularly concerns about trawl nets, or nets that touch the bottom and change bottom habitat. 


 SP: But you have made the point recently that if a species is overfished it doesn’t necessarily mean that it can’t be sustainable. And this seems counterintuitive. People might say well red lists sound more like the right thing to do. RH: There’s an enormous lack of understanding about what sustainability really is. Essentially sustainability has nothing to do with the abundance of the fish and much more about the management system. So if you’re managing it in a way where if it gets to low abundance you’ll reduce catches and let it rebuild. That’s clearly sustainable. You can have fish that are overfished for decades but still be sustainable. As long as their numbers are not going down they are sustainable. Some of it is “overfished” with reference to the production of long-term maximum yield. It doesn’t imply declining and it doesn’t imply threat of extinction. 


 SP: And even if it falls into this latter category that you just described it should be safe for consumers to eat? RH: So long as it’s in a management system like the U.S. where when stocks get to low abundance we dramatically reduce catches, and the evidence is they then rebuild. Then yes, those stocks are perfectly sustainable. 


 SP: What about this issue of bycatch? RH: OK, so the NGOs will say, “Oh this stock is not sustainable because there is bycatch of sharks.” Well the stock is sustainable. Every form of food production has negative impacts on other species. And that’s where there’s an enormous double standard applied to fish. For instance, I guarantee you there’s a big environmental impact of buying soybeans that come from cutting down rainforest. There’s a much higher standard applied to fisheries than almost anything else we eat. 


 SP: What goes into creating a sustainable fishery? RH: The first thing is you have to monitor the trend in the stock. You have to have a system based in good science, that says this stock is going down. Then your management actions have to respond to the trend. 


 SP: What about foreign fish? Which ones can we eat? RH: Much of the fish of the world do not qualify as sustainable because we just don’t know what’s happening in other countries like Africa or Asia. Now, very few fish from those markets makes their way to the U.S. market. But some of the Atlantic cod populations in Europe are still fished much too hard. But the big propulsions in Europe are actually quite sustainable. Much of the cod that make it to the U.S. are coming from Iceland or Norway where the stocks are in good shape. 


 SP: But how do you tell the difference if it’s cod coming from an overfished area? RH: Well, that is a major problem. But if it’s Marine Stewardship Council certified you can be pretty sure that it’s what it claims to be. Personally, I tend to buy a pretty narrow range of fish that come from my region, like salmon, halibut, and black cod. And pretty much all of those are MSC certified. 


 SP: You mention that the boycott on sustainably caught fish does nothing for conservation. RH: You can boycott this all you want, it’s not going to affect what’s caught. Because for these overfished stocks enormous effort is being taken to catch as little as possible and it’s not the consumer market that drives the amount of catch. Those fish are going to be caught and they’re going to be sold because there are a lot of markets in the world that don’t care about classification and red lists, essentially all of Asia, which is the world’s biggest seafood consuming market. The places that consumer boycotts might have an effect is for fish like bluefin tuna or swordfish. 


 SP: Well if boycotting makes no difference, is there a negative side to boycotting? RH: My real target is to tell retailers and the NGOs, “Look, let’s get more reasonable about what we mean by sustainability.” 


 SP: And we need to get more reasonable about the definition of “sustainability” because there are real economic dangers to the fishing industry? Or is it because of something else? RH: Yes, that’s certainly one of the issues. Let’s not punish these fishermen who have paid a very high price to rebuild these stocks. Let’s let them sell what they’re currently catching. 


 SP: So it seems the word “overfished” is also more nuanced? RH: Well I think Congress had this very naïve view that somehow you could manage every stock separately and if cod is depleted, at low abundance well we stop fishing it, but they don’t appreciate the cost of all the other species that we could not catch because we can’t catch those species without also catching some cod as bycatch. Now, there’s a lot of work going on to try to solve that problem. But I it’s important to convince people that we will always have some overfished stocks. And if we continue with our current U.S. statement that ‘no stock shall be overfished’ we’re going to have to give up a lot of food production. We’re certainly doing that now. 


SP: You’ve also argued that fish is a food we need? RH: If we don’t catch certain fish with trawl nets, and let’s say it’s twenty million tons, then that food is going to be made up some other way. And what’s the environmental cost of the other ways of producing the food? My initial calculations suggest that it is quite a bit higher. We should always be saying, “Well if we don’t eat this, where else is the food going to come from, and what’s the environmental cost of that?” 


 SP: So you ultimately feel that the marketing of these red lists has gotten to the point where it’s lost rational sense? RH: Yes. I’m pretty convinced that seafood production is more sustainable than growing corn in Iowa or wheat in Kansas. Because growing corn in Iowa forces us to lose topsoil every year. In another 200 years the topsoil will be be largely gone. Is that sustainable?

By Christie Nicholson | May 30, 2012, 7:17 AM PDT

Taking action against bottom trawling and for the future of fish

Is this a fair view of deep sea trawling?

The article below has been posted on the Greenpeace blog - while the ship is at sea following the deep sea trawling fleet off the west coast of Scotland. There is a web cam aboard the Arctic Sunrise that transmits a new image every 30 seconds.

"I’m on board the Greenpeace ship Arctic Sunrise, currently working in the North Atlantic on our Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) campaign. The CFP- the European fisheries agreement- is reviewed every ten years. By lobbying, taking action and bearing witness where ocean life is endangered, Greenpeace wants to make sure that the EU minsters take the necessary measurement to truly protect our seas.

Yesterday we took action against a French bottom trawler, off the coast of Ireland, in the North East Atlantic ocean. Four swimmers placed themselves in front of the Pierre Jacques Matigny, one of the seven deep-sea bottom trawlers owned by Intermarché –Les Mousquetaires, a famous French retailer that owns its own fleet, with banners that read “Stop overfishing.

I talked to the captain of the trawler, who was obviously not happy about what we were doing, and doesn’t recognize that deep-sea species are endangered because of overfishing.
Sailing to these fishing grounds in the North Atlantic is a way of bearing witness to the ecological crime happening in the deep seas. Deep-sea bottom trawling is indeed one of the most destructive fishing practices, targeting fish stocks that are already overexploited, according to the scientists.Bottom trawl nets smash the seabed and takes everything in its way, even the species that are not targeted. Deep-sea bottom trawling comprises 30% to 60% bycatch – or wasted fish; ocean life that is discarded overboard, dead or dying. Deep-sea species are very vulnerable to fishing activities because they have a very long life span and a very low reproduction rates. Even if they are overfished during a short time period, it can take a century for them to recover.

Moreover, deep-sea bottom trawling is an absurd business model that has no future: to reach profitability, it needs to deplete existing fish stocks. Intermarché’s fleet is facing regular economic losses even though it has received 9.7 millions of Euros of public money: which means, your money and my money. The past and current Common Fisheries Policy has financed its own “Frankenstein” by helping the construction of new bottom trawlers. I don’t want to finance the plunder of the ocean.

Greenpeace is calling on to EU governments to put an end to such destructive practices and to overcapacity within the EU fleet. The Common Fisheries Policy is currently under reform, something that happens only every ten years. It’s now our last chance to save the oceans in Europe by ensuring the fish stocks recover, and to stop subsidies of overfishing and destructive fishing.

We want kids in the future to be able to eat fish and that fishermen can continue their job. But without fish, there is no fishing. We want the new Common Fisheries Policy to ensure that sustainable small-scale fisheries continue to exist."

Extract from a post on the Greenpeace blog by Helen Bourges

Read More: Wide open to abuse: the Common Fisheries Policy

Eelgrass and Seahorses in Studland Bay.

Three years ago the inland sea area off the Dorset caost knwon as Studland Bay became a protected area alomng with the inhabitants that include seagrass and the almost mythical, seahorse. You can find out more about the work of the Wildlfie Trust and ensure a future for these incredibly rare sea animals.

Information about the public consultation underway that can be accessed here.


For details on getting involved in help conserve the area please contact the Trust by email.