The Fishing Industry - The Greatest Animal Welfare Scandal of Our Time? Environment

chemo wasabi wrote in message
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"Steve" wrote in message
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The Fishing Industry


Our eating habits are driving many species of fish to the brink of
extinction. Commercial fishing is also driving many other animals
towards extinction. One in four fish caught in the world's oceans goes
for non-human consumption. Much of the fish on sale in the supermarket
has been factory-farmed. Your taxes are helping to fund these
destructive practices, some of which are stealing food from poor
nations.


Environment

Our eating habits are driving many species of fish to the brink of
extinction
75% of the world's fisheries have recently been identified by the
United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation as being either fully
exploited, overexploited or significantly depleted. (1)
Tuna, cod, swordfish and marlin populations have declined by 90%
during the last century. (2)
The North Sea cod population was once 7 million tonnes. Today's
spawning number is estimated to be a meagre 53,000 tonnes. (3)
In 2002 and 2003, scientists from the International Council for the
Exploration of the Sea (ICES) called for a ban on cod fishing and on
those fisheries that take cod as by-catch. Their warnings have so far
been ignored. (3)
Conservationists say that cod may never recover to their former
numbers. They have failed to do so in Newfoundland and on the George's
Bank.
Common skate populations in the North Sea have declined by 99% in the
last 200 years. (1)
The North Sea mackerel population collapsed in the 1970s due to
overfishing and has never recovered. (1)
Plaice, monkfish and sole populations are also listed by ICES as
'outside of safe biological limits'. (3)
Halibut is officially listed by the World Conservation Union as
globally endangered and 'facing a very high risk of extinction in the
near future'. (3)
Bigeye tuna are as endangered as the Amazon river dolphin but
thousandsare still caught and canned along with yellowfin and skipjack
tuna. (3)
Modern fishing techniques are leading to the extinction of the bluefin
tuna. Across the Mediterranean, aircraft with satellite detection
scour the oceans for schools of bluefin tuna. Once detected,
high-speed fishing fleets trap the entire school within a huge net.
The entire catch is transferred into a cage and hauled towards shore
where the fish are fattened until slaughter. The whole enterprise is
heavily subsidised by the European Union. (4)
Catch quotas, introduced by governments, intended to protect fish
populations from extinction are not working. Many fishing fleets
practice 'high grading', where they continue to catch fish and throw
away ones they don't want until they achieve their quota in premium
size fish. (3)
'High grading' destroys fish weighing up to a million pounds for every
400,000 pounds they keep. (3)
Many non-target species of fish are also caught in the trawlers' nets
and are simply thrown back dead into the sea. Globally, it is
estimated that a quarter of what is caught is merely killed and
discarded. (5)
Many fishing vessels exceed their quotas and do not declare all of
their catch, selling the excess at unofficial ports. According to
ICES, 50% of all cod on sale in Britain is illegal. (3)
90% of the fishing fleet in Whitby, North Yorkshire, were fined
£122,800 at the end of 2005 for fiddling their books to hide the fact
that they were exceeding fishing quotas imposed by the European
Commission to protect the North Sea's dwindling fish populations. (6)
At the end of 2005, The International Council for the Exploration of
the Sea, advised a zero-catch policy for cod in the North and Irish
Seas and west of Scotland. EU fisheries ministers ignored advice for
the fourth consecutive year that catches should be cut to zero to
protect populations from collapse and reduced quotas by just 15 per
cent instead. (7)
A spokesperson for Greenpeace stated, 'if fishing for cod is allowed
to continue, then cod will be wiped out and the British cod fishing
industry will be destroyed'. (8)
Blue whiting now forms the principle supply of fish for the oil and
meal plants that feed the salmon farming industry. The fishing
industry has been granted permission to take double the maximum quota
of blue whiting that scientists say is needed to protect the
population from collapse. (8)


Commercial fishing is also driving many other animals towards
extinction
An estimated 300,000 cetaceans (whales, dolphins and porpoises) die in
fishing nets every year. (5)
One of the most destructive trawling methods is 'pair trawling', where
a huge net is towed between two boats. This method is practised in the
sea bass fishery in southwest England. The nets can catch up to 750
tonnes of fish, and are large enough to hold 12 jumbo jets. They scoop
up everything on the ocean floor. (9)
In a typical year, 350 dolphin carcasses are washed up on the shores
of Devon, Cornwall and Dorset. It is estimated that 10,000 dolphins
and porpoises die each year around the UK and French coasts - many of
them being caught up in gill nets and bass nets. (9)
Globally, 100 million sharks are killed in fishing nets each year.
Tuna fisheries, which in the past had high dolphin by-catch levels,
are still responsible for the deaths of 1 million sharks annually. (5)
Long-line fishing for tuna and toothfish kills approximately 100,000
albatrosses and other sea birds worldwide every year. Birds dive for
the bait planted on the end of the long lines, swallow it (hook and
all) and are pulled underwater and drowned. (10)
17 of the 21 species of albatross now face extinction. (3)
The by-catch from just one Spanish tuna fleet examined by impartial
observers included endangered species such as loggerhead, leatherback,
ridleys and green sea turtles, as well as minke and humpback whales.
(3)
Prawn trawling regularly has a by-catch of 85%, including cetaceans,
turtles, birds and many species of fish. (3)
Bottom trawling is a destructive way of 'strip mining' the ocean
floor. As well as the target fish species, this also results in the
death of thousands of commercially unattractive animals like starfish
and sponges. (5)
Many scientists believe the impact of fishing on bottom-dwelling
animals is 100,000 times greater than seabed oil or gas extraction.
(3)
Industrial fishing ships are destroying cold-water coral reefs growing
around the British coast. These reefs are more than 8,500 years old.
The nets plough through anything that is fragile and long-lived.


One in four fish caught in the world's oceans goes for non-human
consumption
Industrial fisheries target small fish species for conversion to
fishmeal and fish oil used in soft margarine and animal feed,
including the production of pellets - which are 80% fishmeal and oil -
for feeding to farmed salmon and trout. (5)
Removal of large numbers of these small fish leads to a shortage of
food for their predators, including fish such as cod and haddock, as
well as seabirds, such as kittiwakes, puffins and gannets. (11)
2004 was the most catastrophic breeding season on record for the UK's
seabirds. In Shetland and Orkney, entire colonies of birds failed to
produce any young because of severe food shortages. (11)
Much of the fish on sale in the supermarket has been factory-farmed
Fish farming is the fastest growing sector in the world food economy.
(11)
The production of farmed salmon has surpassed the numbers caught from
wild fisheries. (12)
Farmed fish now represent the UK's second largest livestock sector
after broiler chickens. The vast majority of the 70 million farmed
fish produced annually in the UK are reared intensively. (13)
Increasingly, even species we presume are wild - such as cod, halibut,
turbot, tuna, bass and bream - are being farmed. (14)
The farming of carnivorous fish, such as salmon, trout, halibut and
cod, adds to the pressure on wild fish populations, as it takes five
tonnes of fish caught from the sea to produce one tonne of factory
farmed salmon. (3)& (15)
The threat of disease transfer between wild and farmed salmon is
serious. Bacterial Kidney Disease and Infectious Hematopoietic
Necrosis are common throughout the salmon farming industry. (16)
Sea lice infestations flourish in salmon fish farms. These parasites
are also potentially deadly to wild fish. Once the wild salmon pick up
the sea lice, produced by the farm at 30,000 times their natural
level, their school becomes a moving cloud of contagions. The lice
could then infest unexposed populations downriver. (17)
Sea trout numbers in some rivers on the Scottish west coast have
shrunk to a fraction of what they were a decade ago. This area has a
large concentration of salmon farms, to which the decline in trout
numbers has been attributed. (16)
The decline of wild salmon is also particularly marked on the UK's
west coast, where the vast majority of Scotland's 350 salmon farms are
located. (16)
'Genetic pollution' from farm escapees breeding with wild salmon can
have a detrimental effect on the survival of wild populations. This is
because wild fish are genetically adapted to life in their local
environment while farmed fish have been selectively bred for fast
weight gain - not longevity. (3)
Every year 300,000 - 400,000 farmed salmon escape, but in severe
storms the numbers can rise, as in January 2005 when up to 1 million
farmed fish escaped in just one incident. (18)
It has been estimated that the amount of pollution in Scotland due to
the ammonia input from fish farming is comparable to sewage produced
by 9.4 million people. (19)
Excreta from salmon farms helps the growth of the toxin that causes
paralytic shellfish poisoning. The increase in shellfish poisoning in
Scotland has been matched by the massive growth of salmon farming.
(20)
The water around a fish farm can become so heavily contaminated, as in
Loch Hourn (featured in a Sainsbury's advert) in the Scottish
Highlands, that no life can survive on the seabed. (21)
The real price of farmed salmon also includes the killing of an
estimated 3,500 seals around Scottish fish farms each year. (22)
Your taxes are helping to fund these destructive practices, some of
which are stealing food from poor nations
Commercial fisheries in the EU received a total of £644 million in
subsidies during 2003. (3)
The EU also spends £127 million a year buying access for EU fishermen
to distant waters, including those of many poor countries, denying
them access to their own fish. (3)Spanish boats fishing off Fiji sell
the fish in Europe as European-caught.
For a decade, scientists have been warning that fish populations of
West Africa are over-exploited (declined by 50% since 1945) and many
species are facing collapse, due to exploitation by foreign fishing
vessels. (3)
Virtually every fisheries agency, including the International Council
for the Exploration of the Seas, which helps manage fisheries for the
EU, agrees that subsidies during 2003 are the main cause of rampant
overfishing worldwide. (22)
References
Greenpeace. 2004. Rescuing the North and Baltic Seas: Marine Reserves
- a key tool.
Nicholson-Lord, D. 2004. Poisoning Ourselves.August 28th 44-45.
Clover, C. 2004. The End of the Line: How overfishing is changing the
world and what we eat.Edbury Press, London.
Popham, P. 2005. An appetite for disaster.The Independent, May 27th.
28-29.
Greenpeace, www.greenpeace.org/oceans
December. 2005. Whitby fleet fined £122,800 for defying North Sea
quotas. The Independent.
Castle, S. December 2005. EU's failure to agree ban on fishing dubbed
'a death sentence for cod'.The Independent.
Clover, C. December 2005. EU settles for half measure on cod crisis.
The Daily Telegraph.
Gregory, P. 2004. Threats facing cetaceans in the UK and European
waters. Mammal News. No. 140. Mammal Society.
Connor, C. 2005. Korean fisherman deaf to the plight of the albatross.
The Independent.
RSPB, Public Relations Department. 17th Sept, 2004. Press Release.
Institute for Health & Environment, University of Albany.
www.albany.edu/ihe/salmonstudy
Lymbery, P. 2002. In Too Deep - The Welfare of Intensively Farmed
Fish.CIWF.
Shooter, A. March, 2005. What are we eating? Daily Mail.
Brown, R. 2000. Fish farming may soon over take cattle ranching as a
food source. Worldwatch Institute.
Watershed Watch Salmon Society. 2004. Sea Lice and Salmon: Elevating
the dialogue on the farmed-wild salmon story.
Clover, C. March 2005. Salmon farms 'creating vast plagues of sea
lice'. Daily Telegraph.
Jan. 2005. Salmon in peril after the great fish farm escape. Daily
Mail.
Stuart, M. Jan. 2001. How the King of Fish is being farmed to death.
The Observer.
Feb. 2000. Poison linked to fish farms. Sunday Herald.
March. 2005. Campaigners want polluted salmon farm endorsed by Oliver
to be shut. The Independent.
2004. Fisherman's Friend. New Scientist. May 8th.


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I believe in filet and release. chemo
wasabi



And your point is?

In article
Freddy Fox wrote:
snip
And your point is?

He was probably seeing if he could get some idiot to quote the entire
post simply to add a single line comment at the bottom.

"Rob Morley" wrote in message
t...
In article
Freddy Fox wrote:
snip
And your point is?

He was probably seeing if he could get some idiot to quote the entire
post simply to add a single line comment at the bottom.

Excellent, just what I was about to say!
MBS

MrBlueSkye wrote:

"Rob Morley" wrote
He was probably seeing if he could get some idiot to quote the entire
post simply to add a single line comment at the bottom.

Excellent, just what I was about to say!
MBS

Oh, the irony.

Geoff