Saints of marine conservation?

Marine conservation is more than merely posturing.

We need to actually get out there and do something, these people have done something to change the face of marine conservation.

The internet is all well and good, but to truly achieve something plausible it needs to be done by the likes of Charles Clover, Willie Mackenzie and Paul Watson. (In no particular order).

Three different approaches, but, if you think about it, from the same vein.

Thank 'god' for them, and people like them, as we will have nothing left in our oceans if something radical isn't done, and done soon.

Accidental death of huge marlin must call sportfishing into question

This recent article in the LA Times about a huge 865lb blue marlin that died, possibly from heart failure, whilst a sportfisherman attempted to fight and land it will disturb marine life lovers the world over.

Massive blue marlin are now so rare as to be threatened with extinction. Ninety percent of all large predatory fish like this one have disappeared from our oceans due to overfishing and to see a mature, possibly breeding female, hanging upside down on dry land breaks my heart.

I appreciate that this angler would have released this magnificent animal had it not died, but surely we must now ask ourselves that if the marlin is so stressed by the ordeal that it dies from it should we not now consider stopping harassing these beautiful animals in the name of sport?

Lions, tigers and most other endangered large land predators stopped having to endure an early death in the name of sport many decades ago, surely it is now time to include iconic and rare predatory marine fish in that decision?

Certified sustainable: A recipe for disaster?

Sustainable is the latest buzzword in fisheries management and seafood retailing. But with experts predicting that fish stocks will be gone by 2048, can any commercially exploited marine species be classed as truly sustainable?

In 1997, with the backing of Unilever and WWF, the Marine Stewardship Council was formed. Fisheries that are assessed and meet the standard can use the MSC blue ecolabel. The MSC mission is to reward sustainable and environmentally friendly fishing practices.

In an ideal world, for the MSC to work effectively, the assessments would have been carried out from a pristine fish stock level and monitored continuously, but as we know this is now impossible. At least eighty percent of commercial fish stocks are now classified as fully or over-exploited. On this basis what purpose does the MSC label serve, except to possibly encourage the increased consumption of already severely depleted fish?

Several of the world's fishery stocks have been granted MSC certification in the face of growing opposition. Despite protests from California’s Monterey Bay Aquarium and the marine conservation group Oceana, MSC in October 2009 issued an ecolabel on fish products made with Pacific hake from the Pacific Northwest. Ben Enticknap, Pacific project manager for Oceana, maintained that “The Pacific hake are at an all-time low population. There’s no good signs of recovery.” Enticknap also said that the Pacific hake population has fallen 89 per cent since the 1980s, so regulators should restrict commercial fishing and develop plans to rebuild the population.

The MSC certification of the Alaskan pollock fishery in 2005 stirred up a similar controversy with Greenpeace stating in 2008 that "the world’s largest food fishery is on the verge of collapse. Pollock, used to make McDonald’s fish sandwiches, frozen fish sticks, fish and chips, and imitation crabmeat, have had a population decrease of 50 percent since last year".

The MSC base their sustainability criteria on current scientific data gathered about fish stocks, but with 100km illegal gill nets like this all too common and under-reporting of catches rife how can we be sure that eco-labelling is a safe way of judging a fish species' health? Personally I don't think we can.

Before we can strike a balance between exploiting the oceans and sustainably harvesting them we must realise that, as it stands, very few so-called 'sustainable' fisheries can be sustained at current levels. As we move from one depleted species to another i.e. cod to pollock or monkfish to gurnard, the under-exploited fish becomes tomorrow's over-exploited fish.

In future we shall have to treat wild marine species as a very infrequent luxury and pay a much higher retail price for them if we are ever to ensure true sustainability when extracting marine species for food.

Even now companies are exploiting the keystone species krill to fill the commercial demand for fish oil left because of over-exploited fish stocks. Talk about fishing down the food chain, what will we do when the fish and the krill have gone?

Shark protection is finally gaining some momentum

There have been some small but significant developments recently in the fight to save sharks from possible extinction. Let's hope that it's a sign of more to come and that it is not too little too late.

Conservative estimates reckon that between 30 and 70 million sharks are killed annually in commercial and recreational fisheries, and some conservation organisations put that figure closer to 100 million.

Sharks are killed for a whole manner of reasons, their meat is used for food, fins for soup, cartilage in health supplements, livers for oil, skin for leather and teeth for curios, some are even killed just for the sheer pleasure of it.

Some species of pelagic shark such as the oceanic whitetip, blue, porbeagle and mako, have been pushed to the brink of extinction. As they travel the world's oceans they are susceptible to capture, particularly by longline fishing.

However, there might be some light at the end of the tunnel. The Pacific island nation of Palau recently declared that they would be creating a marine reserve for sharks. The sanctuary covers the full 230,000 sq miles of Palau's Economic Exclusion Zone, which stretches 200 miles out from its coasts. Within this region, all commercial shark fishing is banned. Previously, protection measures existed but certain levels of shark-fishing were allowed.

The Maldives in the Indian Ocean have also vowed to stop commercial fishing for sharks in its waters by 2010.

In the USA, a group calling themselves Shark Free Marinas was set up in 2008 to encourage marinas to operate a strictly catch & release policy for the shark fishing boats that operate from them.

Shark protection is also getting more support from celebrities such as January Jones from the HBO smash hit Mad Men, and a video featuring Olympic double gold medalist Amanda Beard has been released.

Even in Asia there is growing unrest over the practice of shark finning, most notably the Hong Kong based shark conservation website Shark Rescue.

In the Philippines the latest issue of Healthy Options Lifestyle Newsdigest is encouraging consumers to support eco-friendly habits rather than unwittingly supporting environmentally damaging practices like shark finning.

Unfortunately the shark conservation message isn't yet getting across to a wide enough audience, only last week in Florida, USA, a mature 750lb mako shark was gaffed from a boat, just for the fun of it apparently.

And whilst this kind of mindless slaughter of sharks is allowed to continue (and attract uncritical media coverage - the LA Times was an exception) sharks, and the people who want to protect them, still have a huge battle ahead.

Lack of predators boosting Scottish shellfish?

In 1975 roughly 262,413 tonnes of demersal fish and 20,000 tonnes of shellfish were landed at Scottish ports.

In 2003 99,654 tonnes of demersal fish and 65,000 tonnes of shellfish were landed at Scottish ports. (Source: Realm of Scotland).

Demersal fish are the primary predators of shellfish and include cod, haddock, ling, monkfish, halibut, hake, and plaice, in other words all the fish that live and feed on or near the bottom of the sea.

As demersal fish stocks have dwindled due to overfishing it appears from the statistics that the shellfish on which the demersal fish feed are thriving.

With fewer and fewer predators except man, I expect Scottish shellfish and the industry that depends on them, to continue to thrive.

Sea angling competition highlights overfishing

Old Man of Hoy, Orkney, Scotland

Nothing in recent times has come close to illustrating the problem of overfishing in UK waters quite so eloquently as this story about a sea angling competition recently held off the coast of Orkney, Scotland.

More than 150 international anglers spent five days (and £580 each) off-shore boat angling for the European championships and only caught one haddock.

My family are from Orkney and I fished those very same waters in the 1970's and early 1980's and they teemed with fish. On one trip to the Black Craig, only a stone's throw from Stromness harbour, we caught plenty of haddock, cod, coalfish, pollock, mackerel and plaice, all in the space of about two hours. Now that same spot is devoid of fish.

Commercial fishermen knew where the prime fish were and systematically cleaned out each well known spot with a couple of trawls, leaving the sea angling community with nothing.

If ever there was a case for marine reserves it is in this story. We have allowed many of our coastal seas to become deserts, and for doing that we should collectively hang our heads in shame.

The demise of sharks

Whilst watching 'Warship' on Channel Five (UK) recently the helicopter carrier HMS Ocean was forced to stop in Malaysian waters to recover a dead body. The body had obviously been in the water for some time as it was badly decomposed.

This got me thinking. Aren't Malaysian waters meant to be shark infested? If so what was a dead body doing floating around long enough to decompose?

Sharks are not only predators, they are also the scavengers of the sea, cleaning up all the dead and dying, keeping the ocean healthy. Was this yet another sign that sharks are becoming increasingly rare due to overfishing?

I recalled in my mind the USS Indianapolis incident. In 1945 whilst on a top secret mission to deliver parts for the atomic bomb she was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine and 900 of her 1200 crew succumbed to attacks by sharks or drowned.

If the Indianapolis was to undergo this fate in 2009, it is possible that the last thing that her crew would need to worry about would be an attack by a shark - there just aren't enough sharks left.

'Shark infested' may well be a term that passes into history as we move into the next decade.

China threatens the entire marine ecosystem

China has the largest fishing fleet in the world at around 300,000 vessels, employing nearly eight million people, and accounts for one-third of the world's reported fish production. Chinese boats land over 17 million tonnes of marine-life annually for human consumption.

With a population of 1.3 billion people that consume 25.8 kg of fish per annum (nearly twice the world average) and an appetite for high-status dishes comprised of endangered marine species such as abalone and shark-fin soup, it is hard to imagine a greater threat to the health of our oceans. (Chinese emperors loved shark fin soup and abalone because it was expensive, rare, tasty and difficult to prepare. The dishes are now served at weddings to show appreciation to their guests and as a show of respect and honour).

With commercial fish stocks in local waters severely depleted China’s distant water fleet now comprises of about 2,000 vessels. These boats receive subsidies to encourage them to leave coastal waters and 300 Chinese vessels have been sighted off West Africa at any one time. Instead of catching high-end fish like tuna they target smaller species like mackerel, the staple fish of local African fishermen.

This has led to accusations of Chinese fishing vessels worsening Africa’s food crisis and threatening the livelihood of poor African fishermen. Others blame the emergence of pirates in Somali waters on the depletion of fish caused by Chinese overfishing.

China’s illegal fishing has also triggered tension with other countries. Indonesia in June seized eight Chinese fishing vessels and detained 75 Chinese fishermen for illegally fishing in Indonesian waters. Korea this year has seized some 150 Chinese fishing vessels for illegal fishing.

With China's rapacious appetite for eating marine-life, a status based social structure, and a rapidly expanding middle-class population that already stands at around 80 million, the future for our global marine ecosystem looks increasingly bleak.

It is now time for 'seal friendly' farmed salmon

In a recent poll 64% of the UK public would be against farmed salmon if it involved the killing of seals.

And yet UK salmon farmers shoot hundreds of grey and common seals every year that are deemed to be a threat to the salmon or the sea-cage nets which house the salmon. It is entirely legal and no limit is placed on the number of 'problem' seals you can kill.

It is believed that many more seals are killed around the UK by people involved with commercial fishing and fish farming that pose no danger whatsoever to the profitability of their businesses.

The UK has 40% of the world's population of grey seals (164,000) and a mere 20,000 of the far less common 'common' seals, a population that has seen some drastic declines in recent years. (If these numbers suggest that there is little need to worry, the African lion's population has fallen from 150,000-200,000 in the 1980's to a mere 18,000-25,000 today, mostly as a result of conflict with farmers).

Seals are intelligent mammals that spend most of their time in the sea and feed on fish, a bit like dolphins and porpoises, but in the mind of the UK seafood business and retail trade, that's where the similarity ends.

Nearly twenty years ago in 1990, the 'dolphin safe' label was introduced by the US Dept. of Commerce and has spread so successfully around the world that it is now almost universally accepted that you make canned tuna as cetacean friendly as possible.

If this can be achieved for a wild-caught, pelagic species like tuna, why on earth are we still having to slaughter seals in order to protect salmon that are being farmed in highly controlled sites within easy access of shore?

It is my firm belief that if the UK public knew the full extent of the numbers of seals being methodically culled in order to produce the marine equivalent of farmed beef, there would be an outcry.

Surely, in the 21st century, we aren't going to do what we did to the wolf in the 17th century to protect cattle and sheep, and exterminate seals to protect domesticated fish?

Our wildlife is just that - wild, and endangering populations of wild animals in order to put cheaper food on our plates is not a practice that should be tolerated.

We've learnt our lesson with 'dolphin safe' tuna, now let's put that into practice and have 'seal safe' salmon.

UK sea angling records tell a sorry tale

If you need proof that something is drastically wrong with our sea fish populations you need look no further than the British sea fish angling records.

These records will give you little indication of the size of fish prior to large scale commercial exploitation (archaeological records show that cod in medieval times could be several meters long), but for a look at the modern state of our marine environment it is enlightening.

If you take an average of the years in which the record fish were caught, the heyday for catching big fish in UK waters in modern times was roughly in the mid-1980's, and it's been pretty much downhill ever since.

No British sea fish record has been officially broken since 2002 (Couch's sea bream) and the oldest record still standing is from 1933 (Atlantic bluefin tuna - they left us when the N. Sea herring fishery collapsed).

Taking a closer look and accounting for commercial fish species only, the picture looks even bleaker.

The largest bass was caught in 1988, cod in 1992, haddock in 1978, halibut in 1979, herring in 1973, ling in 1989, mackerel in 1984, monkfish in 1984, skate in 1986 and plaice in 1989. (Source: British Record Fish Committee). It would be extremely surprising if any of these records are ever broken again.

Whilst this comparison can in no way be described as a definitive account of the state of the UK's seas, it is, for a person who grew up in the 1970's and was used to frequently seeing a 40lb cod or ling adorning the cover of the sea angling press, a sobering reminder of what we have lost beneath our surrounding seas.

Why is marine conservation so neglected?

There are hundreds of organisations in the UK devoted to the conservation of the land and its animals. Incredibly there is only one well known organisation entirely dedicated to protecting our marine environment, the Marine Conservation Society.

Despite the fact that the UK is an island which depends on the sea for it's survival (well the Gulf Stream at least) there are more organisations devoted to saving bats than the animals that live below our chilly waters.

Even though some progress has been made most people still regard the sea and the animals in it as nothing more than a exploitable resource. Marine mammals and some reptiles are afforded legal protection, but almost unbelievably, hardly any native marine fish species (including the great white shark should it ever visit us) are protected by law.

Ten percent of the UK landmass is protected but less than one percent of our entire surrounding seas. Our first national park was created in 1951 but it was only 2003 when the tiny Lundy Island Marine Reserve received a no-take zone status.

National newspapers that wouldn't dream of publishing a picture of a man with a gun standing next to a shot lion will still publish pictures of endangered sharks like the thresher and mako killed by so-called sports fishermen for no other reason than an ego trip.

Perhaps what the marine conservation movement needs is a 'Born Free' for our generation, 'An Inconvenient Truth' for our marine environment? The documentary 'The End of the Line', based on the fish loving visionary Charles Clover's book of the same name is attempting this feat, and god knows our marine animals currently need all the help they can get.

€4.4 billion spent on emptying our oceans of life

The EU has been subsidising the denudation of our oceans to the tune of €4.4 billion over a 12 year period. Spain, possibly the most repacious fishing country on earth, got 48% of the subsidies dispensed.

A huge Spanish trawler, well known for its over-exploitation of critically endangered Mediterranean bluefin tuna, enjoyed EU subsidies of more than €4m. Three other fishing vessels blacklisted by Greenpeace were given handouts running into millions.

In the current EU budget period of 2007-13, Brussels is handing out a similar level of subsidies of €4.3bn.

This money is spent on a European fishing fleet that currently stands at nearly 100,000 boats, and is by any standards vastly over-capacity. To make matters worse these vessels are targeting fish stocks that are already overfished.

It would be hard to imagine a similar situation on land, where wild animals are hunted to near extinction with the aid of European taxpayers money. It is a legalised, government funded destruction on an unimaginable scale, pure and simple.

RSPB risks all on climate-change policy

The RSPB have gone on record as saying they will not oppose windfarms, despite the fact that their primary concern should be the welfare of birds, and windfarms and birds clearly don't mix.

They also believe, quite wrongly in my opinion, that it is climate change not overfishing that is starving our seabirds. (See 'Is the RSPB failing seabirds?' and 'Where have all the sandeels gone?' below).

I assume that the RSPB believe climate change to be such a threat to birdlife that overfishing and windfarms are the lesser of two evils?

This is an extremely high-risk strategy for a charity to take and if they are wrong, and the policies they pursue fail, the countryside will be littered with wind turbines and overfishing will have killed all our seabirds.

My problem does not stem from whether or not climate change exists but that in the RSPB's efforts to combat it, much more pressing issues will be ignored.

The UK government is in a similar dilemma, they compel me to buy a certain type of lightbulb but they subsidise the buying of new cars and cannot protect the rainforests or implement marine reserves.

Surely, prior to tackling the minutiae of climate change, governments and NGO's should demonstrate an ability to adequately tackle grossly overlooked environmental concerns like overfishing before they can convince us that they will be able to make any impression on a warming planet?

Sportfishing must change its image

As is the case with land animals there is now no excuse for killing endangered large marine fish for sport and trophies. Despite this a significant minority of people in the sport fishing community are still killing these fish as proof of their endeavours in a similar vain to the great white hunters of the 1950's.

Due to intensive industrial overfishing only 10 percent of all large fish species including sharks, tuna, swordfish, marlin and sailfish are left in the sea. The era of "iconic" fish that inspired legends and novels is now well and truly over and every single animal is now precious.

Large predatory fish are usually slow maturing and a 500kg fish may be upwards of 30 years old with the largest and most sought after fish almost invariably female and quite often pregnant.

Whilst it is the commercial fishermen who still endanger these fish the most it is the sport fisherman - who kills their prey instead of catching and releasing, and then gets their photo in the popular press - who is by far the most visible aspect of an almost unimaginable disregard for marine life.

The irony is that the sport fisherman, unlike the hunter on land, can have his cake and eat it whilst benefiting the conservation science, but not all are. By catching, recording and releasing the fish it not only provides a sustainable income for the region, it provides sport for the person and invaluable details of the species that they catch.

The attitude of the media must change as well. Just as they would not dream of publishing a picture of a big-game hunter standing next to a shot rhino, it must now be unacceptable for them to show people standing next to a shark or marlin strung up by its tail.

At the beginning of the last century intensive over-hunting caused the hugely numerous wild land animals to become endangered. At about the time Ernest Hemmingway wrote 'The old man and the sea' in 1951, his iconic book about an ageing Cuban fisherman who struggles with a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream, a growing wildlife protection movement for land animals was coming into being and by the late 1960's and early 1970's it was in full swing (for example Joy Adamson's non-fictional book 'Born Free' was written in 1960).

No such conservation movement has until very recently been formed for marine animals, especially fish, and if we are to have any hope of conserving these magnificent animals public attitudes to their slaughter will have to play catch-up with land conservation and change dramatically.

The extinction of sharks

We got over the demise of the dodo, the passenger pigeon and even the Chinese river dolphin, but will the human conscience ever get over the upcoming possible extinction of sharks?

Conservative estimates reckon that between 30 to 70 million sharks are killed annually in commercial and recreational fisheries, and some conservation organisations put that figure closer to 100 million.

Sharks are killed for a whole manner of reasons, their meat is used for food, fins for soup, cartilage in health supplements, livers for oil, skin for leather and teeth for curios, some are even killed for the sheer pleasure of it.

And demand is increasing. As whitefish stocks have collapsed, previously unprofitable shark fisheries have become commercially viable and shark meat more acceptable.

Even in the most optimistic of scenarios this slaughter cannot be sustained. Sharks do not produce huge numbers of eggs like other fish, their young are either born live or in egg cases, and the average brood is only about 12 pups.

Sharks first appeared on earth some 400 million years ago, before land vertebrates and before many plants had colonised continents. Modern sharks, such as the mako and the porbeagle, are regarded as living unchanged from the species we see today, 100 million years ago. The oldest great white shark teeth date from about 65 million years ago, around the time of the extinction of the dinosaurs.

The fact that present-day sharks have not changed substantially for the last 100 million years suggests that they may have attained a level of evolutionary perfection that is unmatched by any other animal. And yet during the last 20 years alone humans have done more harm to sharks than had been done in the previous 100 million years, with some species of shark declining by 90%.

It would be sadly ironic that having survived the extinction of the dinosaurs sharks may well disappear from this planet for the sake of a rather tasteless soup.

Humans have been responsible for the extinction of a single species of animal in the past, but never have a whole order been endangered as we see with sharks. In barely the time it has taken to set up and establish a cohesive shark conservation strategy we are in danger of losing one of the most iconic and evocative animals this planet has ever known.

Shark fishing is mostly unregulated, and conservation measures have been too slow in coming, but we can act now individually. If you see a Chinese restaurant selling shark fin soup, or a health food shop selling shark supplements, or a shop selling shark meat, or a media piece showing a sports fisherman with his dead shark trophy, take five minutes of your time to tell them that this is totally unacceptable.

An ocean would not be an ocean without sharks, and as an apex predator they are crucial to the marine ecosystem and yet the current situation for sharks couldn't really be much worse I'm afraid. We are on the brink of losing an animal that unlike others perhaps, we as humans, really cannot afford to lose this time.

Overfishing & piracy

Overfishing in African waters is forcing fishermen to turn to piracy to make a living. The pirates blame foreign trawlers for destroying their livelihoods, forcing them into hijacking ships and demanding ransoms. The most dramatic seizure yet, a Saudi supertanker with its expensive cargo of oil, has underlined a surge in piracy in the Gulf of Aden, one of the world's busiest shipping routes.

The problem has spread south to the Indian Ocean coastal waters off Somalia with 62 ships attacked this year, and there is a strong possibility that the practice will catch on in other coastal regions as fishermen look for alternative ways of making money.

The International Maritime Board's piracy monitors say there are at least 10 vessels and 221 crew members held hostage in ports such as Eyl, east Somalia. Pirates, many operating out of former fishing ports such as Eyl and Bosaso, are deploying increasingly sophisticated methods, including high speed launches, GPS trackers, and satellite communications, to target shipping.

Is the RSPB failing seabirds?

The RSPB's recent reports that climate change is altering the availability of sandeels and causing seabirds such as kittiwakes, arctic terns and arctic skuas to fail to breed successfully is misleading and damaging to seabird and marine conservation.

It is my belief that the evidence is much stronger for overfishing to be the cause of these seabird failures and that the RSPB are chasing a red herring with climate change and damaging the long term recovery for this problem or finding a suitable solution.

When I read or hear on the radio an RSPB led piece about this problem there is often not even a mention that overfishing is also likely to be to blame. So much so that recently I have been doubting the RSPB's motives for such an inappropriate emphasis on climate change.

An analogy, in my opinion, would be like the RSPB blaming climate change instead of industrialised intensive farming since the 1950's for the decline in British birds. It really is that strange to me and others.

The RSPB is there to protect birds and by flagging every press release 'climate change' it is allowing the real culprits (the commercial fishing industry) to get away with the equivalent of environmental rape.

The sandeel fishery has now become by far the biggest single-species fishery in the North Sea, with landings accounting for one-third of all fish landed. The vast majority of this catch is landed and processed in Denmark. Such fundamental changes in the fabric of the marine ecosystem are what ecologists refer to as 'fishing down the food web'.

Since 1977, total yearly North Sea sandeel catches have fluctuated around 600,000-800,000 tonnes, but since 2003 catches have crashed dramatically to between 200,000-300,000 tonnes. The collapse of the fishery was particularly severe in the Norwegian economical zone with a 95% reduction in landings in 2005.

Many scientists and ecologists believe that the recent disastrous breeding seasons for many of Europe's seabird colonies can be directly linked to the industrial fishing of sandeels in the North Sea.

As early as 1997, two respected Danish fisheries scientists - Henrik Gislason and Eskild Kirkegaard - were highly critical of the North Sea sandeel fishery, and they concluded that "it cannot be ruled out that (sandeel) fishing could adversely effect (sic) the breeding success of the birds. It would therefore be precautionary to close areas to fishing until more is known about sandeel stock structure and interactions between sandeels and seabirds".

And a report published by the International Council for Exploration of the Seas (ICES) suggests that "the amount of industrial fish species taken by fishermen in the North Sea appears to leave little for seabirds and marine mammals".

It would not be unreasonable then to suggest that the overfishing of sandeel stocks may represent the single greatest threat to seabirds in the North Sea, especially in the breeding season when seabirds forage close to their colonies, and not climate change as has been suggested by the RSPB.

Treating marine life like trash

The objective of commercial fishermen is to catch fish that can be sold. The higher the price that these fish fetch at market, the more money the fishermen will make. The fishermen has limited time and space in which to maximise their income, so in order to do so their main objective must be to be as selective as possible. However most fisheries are at least partially non-selective and catch fish and other animals that are not targeted. This non-targeted catch is known as bycatch. This bycatch is usually discarded (thrown over the side of the boat either dead or dying).

In the North Sea nearly one million tonnes of marine life is discarded in this way every year, and unbelievably, seventy percent is comprised of commercially important fish species. This equates to nearly one-third of the total fish landed by fishermen, and one-tenth of the estimated total biomass of fish in the North Sea. These fish are discarded because they are either undersized, over quota or not of sufficiently high value to the fisherman.

In EU Community waters the practice of discarding fish is not illegal and it speaks volumes on EU fisheries policy that when in a time of worldwide food and fuel shortages and rapidly declining fish stocks the practice of discarding is not only tolerated, but is in many cases a legally binding requirement.

There is no way of knowing what damage discarding has on the marine ecosystem as amazingly very little scientific research has been carried out to determine its detrimental affects on the marine ecosystem, but it is worth mentioning that no other industry gets close to the practice of discarding in terms of sheer waste and destructiveness.

Norway obviously feels strongly enough about the matter to have banned the discarding of commercial fish in its waters as early as 1990, requiring all boats to land the fish for processing into fishmeal. Measures have also been introduced whereby fisheries can be closed very quickly if an area is found to contain a large number of juvenile fish.

So what are the solutions? Personally I would completely ban the discarding of bycatch but in the meantine perhaps an agreement could be put in place where fishermen are given an amnesty so boats can land their bycatch and a proper scientific audit can be carried out?

Almost half of all discards are caused by the various types of trawling, and it may be time to call and end to this particularly destructive method of fishing. If the Marine Stewardship Council's fishery certification program and seafood eco-label gain widespread acceptance within the EU member countries this may in itself help to end the indiscriminate methods employed by trawling.

Bycatch and discards are an aberration. We are in the 21st century and yet the wholesale slaughter of our marine life still continues in our oceans, with no protected areas from which marine life can recover from this onslaught, and where the fishermen, once their catch is dead, can pick and choose which animals are worth keeping and which can dumped back into the ocean. This cannot be right.

Where have all the sandeels gone?

Most people accept that the North Sea has been subjected to the most appalling overfishing. Whitefish stocks, such as cod and haddock, have collapsed and the mackerel and herring fisheries are all but commercially extinct.

Under normal circumstances the removal of whole rafts of large predatory fish would allow room for species such as sandeel, the favoured prey species of these fish, to increase their numbers dramatically, but this is not the case.

And why is this? Well, the sandeel fishery has now become by far the biggest single-species fishery in the North Sea, with landings accounting for one-third of all fish landed. The vast majority of this catch is landed and processed in Denmark. Such fundamental changes in the fabric of the marine ecosystem are what ecologists refer to as 'fishing down the food web'.

Since 1977, total yearly North Sea sandeel catches have fluctuated around 600,000-800,000 tonnes, but since 2003 catches have crashed dramatically to between 200,000-300,000 tonnes. The collapse of the fishery was particularly severe in the Norwegian economical zone with a 95% reduction in landings in 2005.

You will not have eaten a sandeel knowingly (unwittingly perhaps as a fish-oil supplement), so what exactly are sandeels used for? The sandeel is an exceptionally oily fish and is harvested for the rapidly expanding fish-oil and fish-meal industries and used in everything from food for farmed salmon to animal feed and health supplements. At one stage sandeels were even used to fuel Danish power stations. And demand is set to increase.

Recent forecasts by the FAO (UN Food & Agriculture Organisation) indicate that aquaculture and its insatiable appetite for fish-oil, will dominate world fish supplies by 2030, fuelling pressure for a high level of industrial sandeel fishing in the North Sea. It takes, for example, 4kg of wild caught sandeel to produce 1kg of farmed salmon.

This does not bode well for the marine species in the North Sea that depend on sandeels for food. Many scientists and ecologists believe that the recent disastrous breeding seasons for many of Europe's seabird colonies can be directly linked to the industrial fishing of sandeels in the North Sea.

As early as 1997, two respected Danish fisheries scientists - Henrik Gislason and Eskild Kirkegaard - were highly critical of the North Sea sandeel fishery, and they concluded that "it cannot be ruled out that (sandeel) fishing could adversely effect (sic) the breeding success of the birds. It would therefore be precautionary to close areas to fishing until more is known about sandeel stock structure and interactions between sandeels and seabirds". And a report published by the International Council for Exploration of the Seas (ICES) suggests that "the amount of industrial fish species taken by fishermen in the North Sea appears to leave little for seabirds and marine mammals".

It would not be unreasonable then to suggest that the overfishing of sandeel stocks may represent the single greatest threat to seabirds in the North Sea, especially in the breeding season when seabirds forage close to their colonies.

And it is not only the seabirds that are suffering. Studies into the diet of common dolphins, grey seals and harbour porpoises in Scottish waters have shown that they feed mainly on sandeels in the spring and early summer. The affects on these species if they cannot find sandeels to eat at this time of year can be disastrous. For example, spring is a critical time for dolphins and porpoises in terms of energy requirements. Some of the lowest sea temperatures occur in the North Sea in March, putting a great strain on dolphins and porpoises as they require the thickest blubber layer to limit heat loss at this time. In addition, young animals are weaned and become independent foragers in spring, placing them at the mercy of changes in sandeel availability.

Ironically the long-term overfishing of sandeels in the North Sea may also inhibit a return to the former healthy status of predatory fish stocks such as cod and haddock, as these stocks can only recover if there are sufficient prey fish for them to feed upon. This is what ecologists refer to as a 'negative feedback loop', a vicious circle of exploitation that renders an ecosystem incapable of a recovery to anywhere near its former productivity.

It may not yet be too late however, but our attitudes and tolerance to an industry that has got perilously close to destroying the very fabric of the North Sea must change dramatically. No longer can we view the commercial fishing industry with the romantic notion of hard working fishermen risking everything to put fish on our plates. It must now be seen for what it is, a ruthless, efficient, hi-tech industry of destruction, that is prepared to wipe out whole species for profit with almost no long-term consideration for the health of the marine environment.

Ocean crisis

One of the long-established ecological principles is that large animals are less abundant than smaller ones. There are fewer elephants than antelope, which are less numerous than rabbits. Because larger animals need more resources, an ecosystem can support fewer of them.

The one glaring exception to this principle is us: Homo sapiens. There are 6.7 billion humans on earth. No other large animal gets close to us as a species. For example, our nearest relatives the great apes (gorillas, orang's and chimp's), number fewer than 350,000.Part of our success as a species can be attributed to our ability to domesticate animals and plants.

Farming as we now call it, has enabled us to feed a population that would be impossible to sustain from wild resources alone. Crops and livestock, genetically modified over millennia for food, have led to a situation where the global population of humans can now double every 40 years or so. The domestication of land animals may have also inadvertently saved the remaining wild populations from being hunted to extinction, a situation that unfortunately does not apply across the board.

The exploitation of wild marine animals continues unabated, mostly without the safety-valve of large scale farming to reduce pressure on the populations. Perhaps because of the vast and hostile environment in which they inhabit marine animals have, until recently, shown remarkable resilience to over 100 years of industrial scale exploitation.

But there are now numerous unmistakeable indicators that this is no longer the case.Ninety percent of all commercial fish species are in dire trouble. Fished well beyond sustainable limits for decades some experts predict that 'wild seafood', as such, will cease to exist by 2050. Fish and jellyfish essentially compete for similar nutrient resources and with the fish gone the jellyfish thrive. Jellyfish populations have exploded all across the world, overtaking fish in terms of total biomass in many areas.

There have been an increasing number of reports where whales, porpoises, seals and seabirds have been found starving to death through lack of enough fish to eat and Namibia are culling 86,000 Cape fur seals this year to protect their overexploited and dwindling fish stocks.

In the Mediterranean sharks have been declared 'functionally extinct' and the bluefin tuna is expected to join them any day now. Sharks across the globe are being cruelly slaughtered in their millions to satisfy the fin soup market - hardly an essential ingredient to human survival.

Longlining is decimating the billfish and pelagic bird populations. The iconic marlin, sailfish and swordfish are now in grave danger of disappearing off the face of the earth forever and the accidental bycatch of pelagic seabirds and turtles, such as the albatross and hawksbill, is reducing populations so quickly that there is virtually no hope of their breeding quickly enough to maintain healthy populations.

Not satisfied with taking all the fish, pelagic fishing boats are now converting to krill fishing to satisfy the increasing demand for fish-oil and fish-meal. Venturing deep into Antarctic waters to harvest what has recently been described as 'pink gold'. Krill are a 'keystone' species whose exploitation we may later refer to as 'the straw that broke the camel's back'.

The evidence of destruction is there for all but the blindest to see, and yet the exploitation goes on unabated and largely unregulated. Something is very seriously wrong with our oceans and if these tell tale signs are continually ignored, that damage may well become irreparable.

Overfishing is a threat to human existence

Virtually every threat to life in the sea is attributable to our use of the 'wait and see principle', which allows overexploitation, ecosystem destruction or pollution so long as someone gains economically and the environmental consequences are uncertain.

In 1988 the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) was formed to gain a better understanding of global climate change and provide scientific evidence that climate change was causing significant damage to our environment. In 2001 it published its Third Assessment Report (TAR). This report was a comprehensive assessment of the scientific, technical, and socio-economic dimensions of climate change and the panel concluded that it was at least ninety percent certain that human emissions of greenhouse gases rather than natural variations are warming the planet's surface. This proclamation galvanised the world into confronting the threat of climate change, if not actually combating it effectively as yet.

The threats to our marine environment (which accounts for seventy percent of the Earth's surface) have had no such large scale, unified effort, and where the scientific data does exist it is often grossly inaccurate or misleading. Take overfishing for example. The FAO (UN Food & Agriculture Organisation) maintains the only global database of fisheries statistics collected between 1950 and 2004. Numbers used are voluntarily reported by individual countries and are taken from sales of fish, rather than scientific surveys. The system overlooks fish caught and consumed by those who catch them because this leaves no economic trail. Three and fourfold underestimates are not uncommon. This can have profound implications for overfishing as some nations sell rights to foreign fishing boats on the basis of these flawed statistics.

Other scientific fisheries data can be equally misleading. In a study by Dalhousie University, Canada, it was discovered that the true scale of the devastation caused by overfishing has remained hidden because in most of the world's oceans industrial fishing began long before fisheries biologists started making accurate estimates of fish numbers. Populations of large commercial fish species tend to level off at about ten percent of their pristine numbers after prolonged industrial exploitation as they no longer become viable to catch at this level. Fisheries managers may be unaware of the initial plenty and come to see this reduced population as normal, sometimes even regarding the fishery as healthy as the population remains relatively stable when it is actually only a shadow of its former self. On this basis it would be fair to assume that the world's oceans may have once held ten times as many fish as they do today, a sobering thought which makes a mockery of the so-called 'sustainable' industrial scale commercial fisheries.

And this situation is not without precedent. Commercial whaling focused initially on the largest species, the blue whale, but switched to progressively smaller less commercially valuable species - fin, sei, and then minke whales - as each stock of the larger species, in turn, was pushed towards extinction. The blue whale was officially protected in 1966 but has never recovered from this slaughter and has stabilised at around five to ten percent of pristine numbers. In 1982 the IWC (International Whaling Commission) applied a moratorium to all commercial whaling. International cooperation has effectively produced wide-ranging proposals and solutions to combat climate change and to a lesser degree commercial whaling, and the same is now needed for the worldwide fishing industry.

Two-thirds of the Earth is fast becoming a biological desert and if the destruction of our marine ecosystems is to be halted, and ultimately reversed, bold, systematic, and effective measures are needed now. An Intergovernmental Panel on Marine Exploitation, if backed up by proper, exhaustive fisheries science, may galvanise world opinion in a similar way that the IPCC has done for climate change.

Tuna destroyer

The Spanish owned and EU flagged tuna purse seiner "Albatun Tres" a 115 m, 3,200 GRT 'super, super seiner' that can net 3,000 tonnes of tuna in a single fishing trip. This is almost double the entire annual catch of some Pacific island countries. If the EU allows this, what hope is there for the world's fish and our marine ecosystems?

Ocean bushmeat

Most of us have seen the pictures, some of the world's most endangered animals being sold in markets across Africa as bushmeat. Gorillas, chimps, monkeys and wild cats, no animal is safe from this destructive trade.

Logging in areas of pristine tropical forest has created a network of new roads which give the hunters easy access to their prey in parts of Africa that may previously have taken weeks to reach.

Suprisingly perhaps, a similar situation can be found in markets across the US, Europe and Asia but instead of gorilla, chimp and serval you will find grouper, tuna and cod. Instead of logging companies you have equally ruthless fishing concerns, who's hunters are the bluewater trawlers and longliners.

How can you compare a grouper with a gorilla? I hear you say. Well according to the highly respected IUCN (International Union for the Conservation of Nature) there are three species of grouper that are critically endangered (calico, goliath and black) one level higher than the endangered mountain gorilla.

It seems that we are quite happy to tuck into an endangered marine animal whilst we reel in horror at what we perceive to be the barbarity of the African bushmeat trade, well here's a warning, that monkfish you had for supper last night is the bushmeat of the ocean, once plentiful, but now a rare and endangered wild animal.

Sustainable commercial fishing is a myth

To claim that fishing on a commercial scale for any wild species of marine animal is sustainable is at best optimistic and at worse misleading.

There is NO accurate way of measuring the stock of a commercial species and in most cases scientific data provided by Governments will err on the side of optimism.

The links below provide three different sources of information about the 'sustainability' of Atlantic swordfish. If you take time to absorb the information you will realise that, whilst well meaning, it is innacurate, confusing, and smacks of guesswork.

Sustainability is the current buzzword, but to truly ensure that a wild species will survive, refuse to eat it.

http://www.fishonline.org/search/advanced/?fish_id=108&q=swordfish
www.nmfs.noaa.gov/fishwatch/species/n_atl_swordfish.htm
http://www.montereybayaquarium.org/cr/SeafoodWatch/web/sfw_factsheet.aspx?gid=25

Junk Science?

As the breeding season for UK seabirds is in full swing the fishing industry has got its minions busily diverting the truth away from their destructive practices.

Dr Ian Napier, of the NAFC (North Atlantic Fisheries College), said today: "The immediate cause of the seabird breeding failures is generally believed to be a shortage of food. They have trouble finding sand eels to feed their chicks. Probably what is happening is that there is some change in the ocean which is reducing the availability of food and also increasing warm water, but we don't really know the details of what the cause is." (More details of report).

The inference in this quote is that global warming is to blame for the recent terrible times our seabirds have had breeding. But may I put it to Dr Ian Napier that 'the change' that is happening in the ocean is that commercial fishermen are removing too many food fish from the ocean that these birds need to feed their young.

It is, of course, no coincidence that the NAFC just happen to release this report at the beginning of the seabird breeding season, so when the headlines start reporting, for yet another year, that our seabird chicks are starving to death, the finger of blame will point towards climate change and not the real culprit, which is overfishing, and the greed and stupidity of our fishing industries.

Marine Bill

At the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century the world saw the need to protect the dwindling flora and fauna found on land. Famous parks like Kruger National Park, Yellowstone Park and Etosha were formed.

In the UK famous poets like Byron and Wordsworth inspired people to take an interest in the hitherto exploited and under appreciated countryside leading to the freedom to roam bill in 1884. The bill failed and eventually mass trespass (direct action) was seen as the only alternative and five men were imprisoned for this action.

100 years later we are in a similar, but worse, positon with our oceans, seas and coastlines. It has taken longer for the outrage of ordinary people to be felt because the damage done has not been visible.

Official Government statistics which show that two-thirds of all commercially caught fish in the UK are disgarded dead surely is the tipping point where we all should now say 'enough is enough' and finally start the sort of mass public outcry that this deserves.

This Government has promised us a Marine Bill which would start the process of protecting our seas and coastlines, but do not actually deem it important enough to pass this bill through Parliament.

So much for progressive politics, continuing to drag their heels on a priority that should probably have been looked at by the UK Government 100 years ago.

Krilling Fields

As populations of once plentiful pelagic fish become exhausted many of the boats equipped to fish for these species are unfortunately starting to turn their attention to krill. Krill are a shrimp like animal that are said to represent the largest biomass on Earth and are key to the health of the marine environment.

Krill fishing briefly peaked in the 1980s when the Soviet Union caught 500,000 tonnes per year but declined significantly with the fall of Communism. However with severely over-exploited fish stocks and an increasing demand for fish oils and food for the Aquaculture industry the krill fishery is expected to boom in the next few years.

Companies like Aker BioMarine are developing new technology that can deliver a stream of live krill onto a vessel and is converting a second vessel for krill catches, alongside its existing Saga Sea. The company says it will be able to catch 200,000 tonnes of krill a year in the near future.
It is reckoned that catches could rise to 1 percent of the total biomass of krill, or 5 million tonnes a year if the total was 500 million tonnes.

Scientists say little is known about krill stocks and as a keystone marine species - they are the favoured food of whales, penguins, fish and seabirds - large scale exploitation could have dire consequences for the marine ecosystem