Forgive me if I go off-topic in this particular post, but I am angry, and I want you to become angry too. Wherever you live, this story affects you, because different versions of it are being played out around the world as attempts are made to balance fish conservation, sustainability, consumer demand, and commercial fishing.
Over the last three evenings, TV viewers in the UK have been shocked by TV chef (River Cottage) Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's latest programme, Hugh's Fish Fight.
Rather than his usual bucolic slant on living in the West Country, producing or catching all his own food and cooking it well, this short series opened with him out on the cold North Sea on a Scottish trawler, where he revealed how the scandal of the ill-conceived European Union Common Fisheries Policy results in nearly half the fish caught off our shores being thrown back into the seas, dead, with video to prove it.
Under the policy, quotas are set limiting how much of a particular species can be caught. These quotas determine the harvest for each nation, and this filters down to the level of each individual boat. Every skipper knows, for instance, how much haddock he is allowed to land in a year. These levels are set to preserve fish stocks in the North Sea. Surely this is a good thing?
The problem is that no-one's explained it to the fish.
The fisherman has no idea, when he casts his nets over the side, what he's going to haul up. By the time the catch hits the deck, it's either dead or dying. Now if a 15lb cod, say, happens to land on the deck of a boat that has already landed its annual quota of cod, the crew have no option but to throw that already dead fish back in the sea. To land it is a criminal offence, and the quotas are rigidly policed.
The film showed nearly half the catch going over the side, trawl after trawl. This was good fish that could feed people. The argument is that the quota system as presently set is unsustainable and ends up depleting the fish stocks it was intended to protect.
The solution is not that fishermen are looking for an unrestricted free for all, but that the policy must be reset so they are allowed to land what they catch, ending the scandal of the so-called discard and bycatch. The expect to be restricted in other ways: number of days fishing per annum, gross weight of catch per annum, whatever. For our part, we must start to change our eating habits which result in the greater part of the fish we presently eat being taken from just a handful of species, while the oceans abound with vast numbers of species we could eat just as happily - particularly if they too moved to more sustainable methods of fishing, and if we were prepared to learn the simple lesson of 'eat what gets caught' rather than insisting on the very few fish we already know. There's plenty good eating, new flavours, textures, recipes, waiting to be found - and it's protein rich, carb free and healthy.
So, I'm asking you to go to the Fish Fight website and sign the petition which will go to the EU and let them know we are disgusted with what they are allowing to happen in their waters. You can do this wherever you live, and the buggers need to be told. There is video on the site of discard being dumped overboard: it makes me feel sad, sick and angry to watch. As I look out of my window onto the English Channel this morning, I can see a couple of small trawlers working a mile or so offshore. Having seen the programme, I now understand why we'll often find dead fish down on the shoreline, and why our seagulls are getting so large: somewhere between 40 and 60% of what I am watching being caught will be dumped back in the water in minutes.
This is wrong and must be stopped.
Of course, the final programme went to Brussels where Hugh tried to button-hole the politicians and commissioners asking them to revisit their policy.
The arrogance of their patronising responses was itself a disgrace. I wanted to take a dead cod and slap it round the faces particularly of the Belgian who told Hugh he was a dreamer who ought to wake up, and the Dane who denied that discard even happened. Well it does. We've seen the evidence, and it must be stopped. And these shits really need to be reminded who it is they work for, so they really do deserve to be told.
Go to the Fish Fight site, please, and register your objection.
Thanks for your time today.
Back to the slimming stuff soon.
Your very incensed old pal,
Fred
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