Let’s not beat about the bush here, if the European Union fishing fleet is throwing 40-60% of its entire catch back into the sea then something is very, very wrong. Quotas are to blame, according to the fishing industry, in that fishing boats are not allowed to land fish below a certain weight, or any of a specific type of fish out of season, or more than a specific volume of permitted fish. So what do the fisherman do – they have no choice but to throw the, almost entirely dead, catch back into the sea so that the screeching, ravenous gulls can make a feast of the piscine flotsam spreading out in the wake of the boat.

And the trawler moves on, scraping and tugging its net along the sea bed to ensure that the screeching, ravenous humans onshore can fill their stomachs with the fish that governments throughout the western world are recommending we eat to improve our joints, our brains, our gall bladders – oh, just about everything, for fish is the new dietary panacaea.

European trawlers equipped with their own processing factories and nets large enough to catch thousands of tonnes of fish every year scavenge the Atlantic Ocean and its connecting seas, with as much as 50% of the remainder of the catch in some fisheries – after the “waste” has been thrown back – being used to feed farmed fish. Japanese whalers have just set off to kill an increased number of whales, for the sole purpose of feeding the Japanese whalemeat industry. Bluefin tuna are being hunted to extinction in the Southern Ocean because the market price is high, and getting higher as the fish become more endangered.

6.6 billion people on this planet, and more of us every year. The demand for fish keeps rising with this: 141 million tonnes caught in 2005, up by 8% since 2001; 48 million tonnes farmed in 2001, up by 31% since 2001. The rise in catch would have been far greater had not both quotas been applied in Europe and North America, and the global stocks of certain fish dropped to dangerously low levels. We are scraping the bottom of a rapidly emptying barrel, and leaving nothing to the rest of the world’s species that depend for their food on marine life. Even the krill are not spared – with many countries including Norway and Japan launching huge factory trawlers to take even more marine protein on board.

Yet in a world where only a billion of us get more than 20% of our calories from animal products, there is an obvious answer: we have to eat less fish. It won’t do us any harm; nor will eating less meat and less dairy. So obvious, yet when an industry worth around $300 billion bares its teeth, the governments of the world cry: “Eat more fish!”

We are eating the world, and the world has nearly been consumed.

Keith Farnish
www.theearthblog.org
www.greenseniors.org