Follow the crew of the Arctic Sunrise on their campaign for Marine Reserves in our North Sea Tour blog
We often talk about 'destructive' fisheries on the oceans campaign - so I thought it was maybe time I explained what that means when we talk about cod. A purist could say that all fishing is destructive, in that it destroys the fishes' life at least, I guess.
With cod in the North Sea there are three major threats: the first is quite obvious - overfishing. That means fishing too many and remember, scientists say fishing any in the North Sea is too many! Yet our politicians in Europe have ignored advice to set zero quotas for seven consecutive years now, setting 'legal' quotas.
On top of that there is the illegal fishing for cod that goes on. Some fishermen are brazen enough to suggest they have to fish illegally to survive - which doesn't say much about their concern for conservation of the very fish they depend on. Illegal fishing happens when fishermen land cod over and above their quota, and has been estimated to account for up to an extra 20-50 per cent above the 'legitimate' quotas in some areas.
Then there's bycatch. This is when species are caught by accident when fishing for something else, and affects everything from huge whales to tiny seahorses. It's indiscriminate, wasteful and can amount to a huge percentage of the actual catch.
For example in beam trawl fisheries for plaice, there is a huge bycatch of cod, most of which are young juveniles. That means they are thrown back overboard, dead and wasted, never having reached adulthood. In some beam trawl fisheries the bycatch can be over 70 per cent of what's dragged up in the net.
Lastly there's the plain old destructiveness - fishing methods that trash the seabed as they hunt fish. Beam trawling is a prime example, annihilating everything in its path - from bottom-dwelling species like starfish and sea urchins, to slow-growing corals.
These have a disastrous impact on the whole ecosystem including cod and the species they eat. Another threat to the cod is the depletion of their food by fisheries targeting small fish like Norway pout and sand eels (which are a favourite of seabirds and play a crucial part in marine food chains) which are then processed into meal and oil.
Destructive fishing is not sustainable - we're well on our way to wiping out the North Sea cod, just as we have done with cod on the other side of the Atlantic. Sadly it's a story that's all too common in our oceans.
