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You might have hoped, in view of the European Union’s failures, that Brexit would provide an opportunity to do things better. It does, but it is not being taken. On the contrary, while the EU will introduce a legal commitment to prevent any fish species from being exploited beyond its replacement rate next year, the UK’s
fisheries bill contains
no such safeguard. There are no plans to turn our “protected areas” into, er, protected areas. The looting of our seas is likely, if anything, to intensify.
What makes all this so frustrating is that regulating the fishing industry is both cheap and easy. If commercial fishing were excluded from large areas of the sea, the total catch would be likely, paradoxically, to rise, due to what biologists call the spillover effect. Fish and shellfish breed and grow to large sizes in the reserves, then spill over into surrounding waters. Where seas have been protected in other parts of the world, catches
have grown dramatically. As a paper
in the journal PLOS Biology shows, even if fishing was banned across the entire high seas –
as it should be – the world’s fish catch would rise, as the growing populations would migrate into national waters.
Only rebellion will prevent an ecological apocalypse
George Monbiot
Read more
Nor are the rules difficult to enforce.
As the World Wide Fund for Nature has shown, fitting every boat over 10 metres that fishes in UK waters with remote monitoring equipment would cost just £5m. Cameras and sensors would record what the boats catch and where, making illegal fishing impossible. But fitting this equipment is voluntary. In other words, it is mandatory to comply with the law to prevent discards, over-quota fishing and fishing in no-take zones, but it is voluntary to fit the equipment that shows whether or not you are complying with the law. Unsurprisingly, fewer than 1% of vessels have agreed to carry the equipment. Given the vast profits to be made by cutting corners, is it any wonder that this industry keeps driving fish populations – and the living systems they support – into collapse?
There are almost no fish or shellfish we can safely eat. Recent scandals suggest that even the Marine Stewardship Council label, which is supposed to reassure us about the fish we buy, is no guarantee of sound practice. For example, the council certified tuna fisheries in which
endangered sharks had been caught and finned; and, in UK waters, it has
approved scallop dredgingthat rips the seabed to shreds.
Until fishing is properly regulated and contained, we should withdraw our consent. Save your plastic bags by all means, but if you really want to make a difference, stop eating fish.
• The Guardian aims to publish recipes for sustainable fish. For ratings in your region, check:
UK;
Australia;
US.
• George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist
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Topics
Fishing
Opinion
Link:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/may/09/seas-stop-eating-fish-fishing-industry-government?CMP=share_btn_tw
In this photo from May, an official of the Department of Marine and Coastal Resources feeds seagrass spread to Marium, a baby dugong who became separated from her mom in Libong island, Trang province, southern Thailand. The dugong has since died. (Sirachai Arunrugstichai/The Associated Press)
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