Wednesday 21 November 2007

Fish dumping will ruin industry (sic)

Interesting report on the BBC, sent to me by a good friend, this also made the BBC World Service and BBC News 24. The story is that Europeanfishermen are complaining that because they have already exceeded their fishing quota for various whitefish (cod, haddock and whiting) they have to through away significant quantities of valuable by-catch from allowed prawn trawling.

The report(s) can be found here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7103363.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7102241.stm

The destruction and wastage is terrible and very very sad of course, but my believe is that the fishing industry is wholly responsible.

Here is my suggestions.
  1. European wide fishing quotas must remain and need to be strictly enforced based on scientific evidence.
  2. Fazing out of trawling within areas of high biodiversity, and introduction of penalities for their use.
  3. Investment into sustainable shrimp fishing and shrimp farming.
  4. Consumer education and labelling into the shrimp industry and the source for shrimps on supermarket shelfs.

The above should also be introduced into the Asia Pacific region as an urgent matter

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