05 November 2008
A million tonnes of North Sea fish discarded every year
A million tonnes of fish and other sea creatures caught in the North Sea are thrown overboard every year, according to a new report from WWF-Germany.The study, Sea Creatures Are Not Rubbish, shows that one-third of North Sea catch is discarded and calls for a gradual ban on the practice of discarding in the European Union.
This practice occurs when boats decide to dispose of fish which they catch but cannot land or derive income from, or when they have caught more fish than they are allowed to land, or they discard the less valuable fish in order to make more space for more valuable fish.
For example, the report cites the situation with Dover sole, for which six kilos of sea creatures are caught incidentally and discarded for every kilo found in the fishmonger. Similarly, catching one kilo of Norwegian lobster or scampi results in five kilos of bycatch.
The European Union recently declared that 88 per cent of the fisheries stocks of the EU are overfished, compared with 25 per cent on average globally. Bycatch is a major contributor to overfishing, and this unsustainable and illogical practice should be addressed.
WWF is calling for a European-wide discard ban and a bycatch action package. In the future every fish caught should be landed and allocated to the catch quota.
At the same time fishermen should be obliged to use better catch technologies and in this way the bycatch in some fisheries could be reduced by up to 90 per cent.
A legislative initiative against discard practice, announced by the European Commission, was only recently torpedoed by the powerful fishery lobby of some member countries.
You can download the report from the WWF site at http://assets.panda.org/downloads/studie___meerestiere_sind_kein_muell_.pdf
--
What do you think of this news item? Start a discussion.
Bookmark with: del.icio.us | Digg | Newsvine | NowPublic | Reddit
|
Slashdot It! | Facebook | StumbleUpon --
Subscribe to SCUBA News (ISSN 1476-8011) for more free news, articles, diving reports and marine life descriptions - http://www.scubatravel.co.uk/news.html
Subscribe to SCUBA News (ISSN 1476-8011) for more news, articles, diving reports, reviews and marine creature of the month.
(SCUBA News is published by SCUBA Travel once a month. Will will keep your e-mail address confidential and only use it to send you the monthly newsletter.)
