There's (no?) more fish in the sea

Yesterday I treated myself to a couple of hours fishing from a local pier. The weather was pleasant and I was fortunate enough to catch a couple of mackerel. I had one for breakfast this morning and very nice it was too !

Mackerel are a stunning fish. This photo doesn't really do them justice.

Back in January 2011, TV chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall also went on a fishing trip. His was to find more about the industrial end of sea fisheries. What he found shocked him.

He learnt that half the fish caught in the North Sea are being thrown back into the sea, dead, because of EU laws. These laws are intended to help conserve fish stocks by setting limits on how much of species such as cod haddock and plaice can be landed by individual commercial fishermen.  Fish "over-quota" accidentally caught in a mixed catch have to be thrown back overboard – invariably dead !

So, Fearnley-Whittingstall launched a campaign ‘Hugh’s Fish Fight’ to try to change EU law. He was soon supported by a wide coalition of environmental bodies and an public response. Over 700, 000 people have signed the fish fight petition, and so many people emailed their MPs to protest about discards that they forced a debate in the Houses of Parliament.

Last July, the European Commission published their proposals for a new Common Fisheries Policy, which included recommendations for a discard ban. Unfortunately that doesn’t guarantee that the law will actually change - and if it does it will be sometime before the new Policy becomes law.

Anyway back to mackerel. Last year Iceland unilaterally increased its allowance for catching mackerel to nearly 157,000 tonnes - up from almost zero in 2006 - and the Faroes upped their catch quota six-fold, to 150,000 tonnes.

The increases have sparked widespread concern about the sustainability of mackerel stocks - the International Council for Exploration of the Sea recently warned that overfishing of mackerel stocks must not continue.  So unless things change future generations of rod and line angler, like me, may be unable to take a mackerel home for breakfast.

A longer wait for the mackerel to bite in future ?

What can you do ?

Find out about Hugh’s Fish Fight at http://www.fishfight.net/
 Join Hugh's Fish Fight on Facebook or follow on Twitter.

More information
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/feb/24/fishing-skippers-fined-illegal-catches

http://www.thegrocer.co.uk/people/big-interviews/maria-damanaki-im-the-enemy-of-irresponsibility/229063.article?redirCanon=1