WELSH consumers are being urged to change their fish-eating habits to help prevent some stocks crashing into oblivion.
Dire warnings about the exploitation of the seas were made at a debate — Fighting for a Sensible Fish Future — at the Hay Festival on Thursday.
Experts said it was vital people who ate fish looked to other species to both protect favourites such as cod, haddock and some species of tuna, and to create a market for fish which were otherwise discarded.
Peter Duncan, aquaculture and fisheries manager for the Marine Conservation Society, said 85 per cent of global fish stocks were "at or above the level of exploitation".
In European waters, 88 per cent of species were over-fished, he added.
He described fish as perhaps the only large scale, free and renewable food source on the planet. "It is a massive and relatively collectable resource," said Dr Duncan.
"If you harvest it sustainably, you can continue taking a quantity, and it will regenerate.
"The problem we have is that we don't harvest it sustainably and have not done so for many years."
He said fish production had been rising worldwide, but that was due to fishermen "fishing down the food chain" and catching smaller and smaller fish, some of which went to feed farm animals like chicken and pigs.
"There is too much fishing 'power' chasing too few fish," he added.
Aquaculture — the farming of fish and shellfish — was an "increasingly vital component in how we are going to feed people in the future," added Dr Duncan.
Aquaculture currently provides around 50 per cent of the fish we eat in the UK.
Dr Duncan said better science, better fisheries management and a better understanding of an ecosystems approach, which values healthy ecosystems, were crucial to protect threatened fish stocks.
UK Minister Richard Benyon said the European Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) badly needed to change, and that he was determined to alter it when it came up for reform next year.
He branded the CFP a "disastrous system of management" and said he wanted to be the last UK minister to "go through the charade" of horse-trading for extra fishing quotas.
Visit www.fishonline.org to find out which fish to eat and which to avoid.
richard.youle@swwmedia.co.uk
 |  |
Enjoy England TwiTrips Marcus Bent La Liga Stan Collymore Classical music Stephen Carr
No comments:
Post a Comment