Re: the industrial destruction of fish stocks.....


"Mel Rowing" <mel.rowing@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:cd3a43b0-36b5-43e2-9694-9bdf61042e98@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
On May 15, 10:14 pm, "True Blue" <W...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
"Mel Rowing" <mel.row...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message

news:8a2d7e78-79df-4ec3-8a10-3d7795cf9490@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
On May 15, 4:25 pm, abelard <abela...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/may/11/fishing.food/print
"'Quite simply,' Roberts says, 'agreements and deals brokered by
politicians will never be satisfactory. They always look for the
short-term fix.' He and his team at York University did a survey of
the last 20 years of EU ministerial decisions on fish catches and
found that, on average, they set quotas for fishing fleets 15 to 30
per cent higher than those recommended as safe by scientists.

We gave up chasing wild animals for food millennia ago when we
invented animal husbandry.

One day we will have to do the same with respect to marine animals. In
fact the change has already started.

"Fish species raised by fish farms include salmon, catfish, tilapia,
cod, carp, trout and others."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fish_farming

******

I admit to not having any scientific grounding to my distain for
farm-fished
salmon, but my instinct prevents me buying it. Compare the colour with
wild
salmon and compare the taste. There's no contest.

I'm sure this is so!

I'm equally sure that modern beef tastes differently from the ancient
wild ox, pork different from wild boar and so on.

Taste is acquired.

Further taste and texture of food can be changed through selective
breeding and genetic modification.

There is also the possibility of giving nature a hand. Single fish
can lay thousands of eggs. Most of the eggs are eaten through
predation before hatching. Most of the hatched fry are eaten through
predation before they ever reach any harvestable size.

What would be the effect on the populations of commercial species of
seeding the oceans with partly grown fish?

That is how trout rivers are kept stocked.

I have thought about this at length in the past. Through my experience sport
diving, I would advocate making large areas of the sea bed unfishable. I
propose dumping reinforced concrete "tank traps" that would sit 3m high on
the seabed. You could space them 20m apart in a grid say, 2km square.
Cheaply made clay or concrete bundles of tubes could also be dumped to
encourage habitat for small marine life. The only stipulation I can think of
would be that any material dumped must be chemically inert.

You'd be amazed at how quickly a shipwreck or other large obstacle becomes a
nature reserve. The snagged fishing nets that are draped over most wrecks in
the sea around Britain and Ireland, are a testament to the protection these
artificial reefs provide. During 1991, I had occasion to work on the Conoco
gas rigs off the coast of Lincolnshire a few times. There is a "no sail"
zone around the rigs to minimise the risk of collision, I think it's 500m or
maybe 1000m. Either way, the fish get fed six times every 24hrs - the
leftovers from breakfast, lunch and dinner for the day shift and the same
again for the night shift. The maintenance divers tell stories of abundant
stocks of huge fish around the legs of the platform and all around the zone
were small sport fishing boats cashing in on the bonanza. It doesn't take
much to let nature come back, although the Grand Banks disaster off
Newfoundland may need a kick start along the lines you propose re seeding.

I know I'm preaching to the converted here, but the CAP has caused enormous
damage to Britain's fisheries and the first move in any ecological
fight-back in regard to fish stocks is to take control of our waters once
again. I was in Italy over the weekend and experienced a sense of deja vu,
when I passed a diving shop which was stocked to the gunnels in
spear-fishing guns. I dived Spain in the 80's and 90's and the story was the
same there. Spain and Italy have exactly the same maritime environmental
protection laws as Britain has, but the *general attitude* - the zeitgeist
if you like - to conservation is light years away from our own. For some
reason the sense of responsible husbandry that exists among British, Irish
and Atlantic French fishermen is missing from those in the Mediterranean. It
was reported some time ago, that the Spanish inspectorate responsible for
policing their fleet, hardly ever left Madrid. When diving the Medas Islands
off Estartit, in Spain, I became aquainted with a woman who had fought to
make the place a nature reserve. Although by then (1989), the Islands had
been a nature reserve for some time, enforcement of the no-fishing rules
were lax at best, until a few years before we dived there, when the State
took matters into their own hands and transgressors were severly punished.
But, until then she and her colleagues had experienced physical intimidation
and general contempt in their quest to preserve the maritime environment,
because people simply didn't give a damn. Most of them still don't.

It's funny how things change. I remember the feeling of national humiliation
when the Icelandic gun boats so bravely stood up the the Royal Navy. The
Icelanders were, strictly speaking, acting illegally and unilaterally. But
chart the fortunes of their fisheries and those of the Norwegians, compared
to our own. The conclusions are a no-brainer.






.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: No cichlids here
    ... Can anyone point me at anything to prove if they are a hybrid peacock ... As for OB peacocks. ... I've never seen a wild one. ... what an awesome fish. ...
    (rec.aquaria.freshwater.cichlids)
  • Re: Dwarf Gourami
    ... Thanks for all that info on their wild behaviour. ... Perhaps that is a reflection of better breeding and different suppliers of these fish in North America. ... is it having a negative impact on the environment or the species. ... the aquarium trade has driven other fish like Botia sidthimunki and Balantiocheilos melanopterus onto the IUCN redlist. ...
    (rec.aquaria.freshwater.misc)
  • Mercury & dioxins in fish
    ... safety and nutritional contribution of wild and farmed fish. ... As far as I understand, high consumption of contaminated fish, like top ... methylmercury and dioxin-like ...
    (sci.med.nutrition)
  • Re: I need help.
    ... you believe catching domesticates the fish, you can't eat a wild one. ... ask them if they clip the adipose fins of trout stocked as fry or sub- ...
    (rec.outdoors.fishing.fly)
  • Re: Jap bastards!
    ... a valid criticism of Ireland under the header, ... night that's it's no use blaming Spain for. ... The tons of cod used for Fish and Chips are supposedly caught perfectly ... nothing to do with over fishing and the poor stocks of fish there are today. ...
    (soc.culture.irish)
Loading