Fighting for fish
New rules to ban fishermen from throwing millions of
tonnes of fish overboard
Plans to stop fishermen dumping unwanted dead fish in the sea
were announced this week.
European leaders hope that discarding fish such as mackerel,
herring, cod, haddock and plaice will be banned by 2018.
Fishermen have quotas, or limits, to the amount of certain types
of fish they can catch. If they catch more than these limits, they
have to throw the extra fish back into the sea, even if they are
already dead.
And some types of fish are more valuable than others. Often
fishermen will discard less valuable species to make room for ones
they can make more money from.
In 2008, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) carried out a study that
found that one-third of all fish caught in the North Sea was being
discarded. That means about a million tonnes of fish and other sea
creatures are thrown overboard every year.
The Scottish government says that £1 billion of fish will be
wasted in the next ten years unless new rules are introduced.
The TV chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall launched a campaign to
ban fish discards last year. Over 650,000 people signed a petition
to ban the practice after his Channel 4 Fish Fight series.
Fishermen say that simply banning discards is not realistic and
what they need is practical help to develop more selective fishing
methods. Scotland's prawn fishermen, for example, came up with a
plan just last week to reduce the amount of unwanted fish they
throw away by up to 70%.
New fishing gear has been developed that is designed to allow
fish such as cod and haddock to escape from nets, while prawns are
still caught.
The environmental charities Greenpeace and WWF say that more
practical ideas like this are needed to help fishermen to target
their catch.
"Discards are a wasteful and environmentally damaging practice,"
said the fishing expert Giles Bartlett from WWF.
"However, to protect the marine environment and create healthy
sustainable fish stocks, any steps to end discards must go
hand-in-hand with action to identify more selective ways to
fish."
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Fighting for fish
Overfishing and pollution take toll on marine
life
Herring, oysters, cod: they once formed the staple diet of many
thousands of Scots.
But these and other Scottish marine species have declined
drastically over recent years because of overfishing and pollution,
and must be restored if Scottish coastal communities are to
thrive.
That was the conclusion of a 2009 scientific report issued by
Scottish Environment LINK, a network of 34 voluntary sector
environment organisations, including the Marine Conservation
Society, Friends of the Earth and WWF.
The report paints a worrying picture of a depleted and
unbalanced marine environment where human activities have damaged
both seabed habitats and species.
As well as detailing overfishing of cod and herring, it
highlights less well-known but vital species such as a slowgrowing
algae called maerl.
Maerl forms "reservoirs of biodiversity" on the seabed, giving
invertebrates and fish a sheltered environment. Scallop dredging
has killed off large swathes of maerl, and the algae has been under
attack from waste from fish farms.
Native oysters have also suffered: in the 1830s, 60 million
oysters from the Firth of Forth were landed in Newhaven in Fife
alone, but by the 1870s, the beds were exhausted; the oyster may
now be extinct in the Firth. File shells, which form bony forests
on the sea bed, stabilising sediment and supporting other species,
have been damaged by scallop dredging and chemicals.
The report, by marine ecologists Dr David Hughes and Dr Thom
Nickell at the Scottish Association of Marine Science, says: "There
is no doubt that a healthy marine environment is an ecologically
and economically productive one."
The instances of species decline presented in the report, they
say, "have ultimately damaged the engine house of our marine
economy including fisheries".
However, the authors stress it is possible for marine ecosystems
to recover, a process showcased in the Clyde estuary which has been
transformed into a home for 34 fish species, including salmon.
Other examples of good practice highlighted in the report
include better management of salmon farming, reducing discards from
fish catches and giving vulnerable species time to recover.
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