That pretty well sums up the industrial fishing industry. The figures are astonishing: almost two-thirds, TWO-THIRDS, of the fish caught in British waters are thrown back because they don’t meet specifications. That’s thrown back dead, because industrial hoovering methods means death for anything in their path.
Scientists estimated that a total of 186 million fish weighing 72,000 tons was caught by English and Welsh commercial fishing vessels in the English Channel, Western Approaches, Celtic and Irish Seas between 2002 and 2005.
Of this total catch, 63 per cent of the fish, weighing 24,500 tons, were thrown back over the side.
But hey, it is better elsewhere: this figure is thought to be about 1.5 times as bad as the general worldwide statistic, so in general about 40% is thrown back – Great!
Now I can already here a certain sector blaming regulation – but those regulations about undersize fish, for example, and against the taking of certain species, are there for good reason – to try to save stocks. Surely the answer is to fish in ways that are selective, just as fishermen have done traditionally for millennia.
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