Posted by Willie — 16 July 2009 at 12:31pm
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Despite the old
adage, it seems that crime does
pay... at least if you are the Stevenson family of
Newlyn.
As reported by the
BBC,
the family, who operate fishing trawlers in Cornwall, were prosecuted for routinely landing
illegal fish. Not only were they landing species they had no quotas for, but
they were doing so by passing them off as other species, so it was all
pre-meditated and well-orchestrated. They also conveniently ran the
auctions where the fish are sold,
and falsified the records of what fish had been sold to match what the skippers
said they landed.
Posted by reto — 14 July 2009 at 5:02pm
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With around 80 per cent of fish stocks in trouble, species driven to extinction and ecosystems on the brink of collapse, it's time to rethink how we harvest our oceans. This new video shows how Greenpeace has been encouraging retailers to clean up their seafood shelves - by switching to a sustainable seafood sourcing policy they can change the world's fisheries and help to protect the world's oceans.
Posted by Willie — 7 July 2009 at 1:08pm
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Seafish and the fishing industry are cod-a-hoop recently, because it seems that cod stocks are doing better. You may have missed the news, but the story is that the EU's scientific advice suggests that stocks of North Sea cod have increased 5% in the last year, and are up a whopping 40% from the average in 2005-2008.
Sounds like great news. And of course any increase in a rampantly-overfished population of animals is to be welcomed. But it needs to be set in context.
A couple of stories in the press today caught my eye. Both are about what we internally refer to as 'charismatic megafauna' (the big animals people tend to be interested in and care about), but they are also both damning indictments of our failure to protect our oceans and the life that depends on them.
Posted by jossc — 24 June 2009 at 2:02pm
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Sara Holden, our International whales campaign coordinator, blogs from the 61st International Whaling Conference in Madeira, Portugal. Even though for the first time in years the anti-whaling nations have a decent majority on the IWC, genuine protection for whales still remains low on the agenda.
As metaphors go, how about this? The IWC meeting is being held in a
casino - and anyone betting on a good outcome for the whales would be
unlikely to win. Equally aprt, just a few minutes before the opening of the 61st International Whaling Commission meeting, a large rat was seen scuttling through the hotel and out the door. Not a bad illustration of what's going on here.
Posted by jossc — 18 June 2009 at 11:04am
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Greenpeace activists got a good reception at the Japanese Consulate in Edinburgh yesterday when they handed in a wishing tree* full of requests for justice for the Tokyo Two.
Posted by jossc — 9 June 2009 at 12:25pm
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It's all gone a bit tuna crazy in the media over the last couple of days. What with the launch of The End of the Line, the Nobu protests and the Pret a Manger announcement, coverage of the plight of bluefin tuna has accelerated faster than one of the mighty fish themselves (which as we all know by now, is quicker off the mark than a Porsche 911).
Last year we published our tinned tuna league table, ranking the main retailers and brands on the overall sustainability of their canned tuna. Tinned tuna, which is normally skipjack (the most common variety), is a food cupboard staple in the UK, and we are the second biggest consumers in the world, so we can have a massive impact on improving the sustainability of the fishing that fills the tins.
As well as assessing the information given on the tins (some didn’t even tell you what species was inside!) we also evaluated the impact of how the fish were being caught, and the company's overall sourcing policies.
The End Of The Line has certainly been getting the rich and famous agitated on the often-overlooked issue of fish. The film's narrator Ted Danson
has been a long time campaigner on oceans issues but in the past couple of weeks many more famous faces have been getting interested in fishy things.