Worldwide, the fishing industry is in decline because of years of over fishing. In 1988, for the first time in human history, global wild fish catches dropped and they have continued to fall ever since. In European waters, four out of every five known fish stocks are already beyond safe biological limits. As stocks decline, more extreme fishing methods have been employed to maximise catches of those that remain.
Posted by jossc — 22 February 2010 at 6:44pm
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For those of you who missed Saturday's edition of one of Radio 4's most popular programmes, 'From Our Own Correspondent', you missed a great piece on the desperate plight of Pacific tuna. Focusing on overfishing by EU and Asian nations around the Cook Islands, it covered the story of our very own ship Esperanza busting a Japanese purse seining vessel which was fishing illegally in Cook Island waters.
Posted by jossc — 30 October 2009 at 4:04pm
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In this, the second instalment of the 'Our Ocean Wonderland' animations, Stephen Appelby considers the culinary seafood options likely to be open to us once we've emptied the seas of edible fish.
Posted by Willie — 19 October 2009 at 2:21pm
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It's finally here.
The movie that changed the way people think about what’s on their dinner plate is hitting a small screen near you. The End of the Line will be screened at 10pm on More4 tomorrow night, Tuesday 20th October.
Posted by jossc — 23 September 2009 at 11:26am
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Those of us who've been trying to make sense of what sort of impact destructive overfishing is having on marine life know things are bad - when you have a global fleet with the capacity to catch every edible thing in our oceans four times over, patchy regulations at best, and a massive incentive for fishermen to catch the most valuable species quickly before someone else fishes them out - it's not surprising many fish stocks are in trouble.
Posted by jossc — 20 August 2009 at 10:32am
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Every once in a while in my meanderings through the web, I come across something that really hits the spot - like this amazing animation from Phil Reynolds, for example. Phil's taken an idea from Charles Clover's book about overfishing, The End of the Line, and he uses it beautifully to illustrate the problem of 'bycatch' - the non-commercial species which are also killed during the process of bringing our favourite fish species to the table.
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.
Posted by jossc — 5 June 2009 at 3:32pm
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The End Of The Line author Charles Clover talks to us about his book, the film and the plight of the ocean.
What's the film about?
It's an adaptation of my book, exploring
how fishing is currently the most
destructive human activity on 70 per cent of the
planet's surface.
Fishing with modern
technology is wiping out whole ecosystems
we have barely started to understand. It's
driving species such as the bluefin tuna
towards extinction, undermining the food
security of billions of people and damaging
the oceans ability to act as a sink for
carbon dioxide from the atmosphere – all
to provide us with delicious things to eat.
For centuries people have viewed the seas as an unlimited resource which can be tapped into at will, and one that will rapidly replenish itself regardless of how much we take from it. But the more we learn about what's happening in our oceans, the more we realise that this is no longer true, if it ever was.
