francene--blog. Year 2013
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February 27th

2/27/2013

 
In Europe, the plunder of the ocean for wild fish continues. See the whole sad story here. The sea exemplifies the world's on-going failure to manage shared natural resources.

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Despite mass public pressure by campaigners, some countries are acting like selfish, bullying children, wanting to take everything in reach.

There's widespread agreement among nations on the need to conserve fish stocks but often disagreement on the details of how to do it. And the need for harmony in the European Union process allows a handful of Mediterranean countries to put the immediate interests of fishing crews before the fish stocks themselves. It all means that globally about 85% of stocks are said to be fully exploited, over-exploited, depleted or slowly recovering. The US, Australia and the UK have created marine reserves to protect their shores.


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I'm stunned that the EU ministers continue to argue over this issue. Almost a quarter of all catches go back overboard dead because they are not the fish the crews intended to catch. They've agreed to phase out the controversial practice of dumping unwanted fish, which is a step in the right direction, yet w a UK trial uses CCTV on fishing boats to crack down on discards, yet Spain, France and Portugal will be allowed to discard 9%, shrinking to 7%. The British government, one of the campaigners for change, said it was disappointed that the ban was not absolute, but that last night’s result was an historic victory to end a scandalous policy.


And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

With the world's resources depleting, we can't afford to squander her riches.

Rebeca Schiller link
2/26/2013 09:04:19 pm

What a disgrace. I was born in Spain and spent a great deal of my childhood and early adulthood in Mallorca. I know how important the fishing industry is there, but all these countries need to have strict regulation.

Francene Stanley link
2/27/2013 05:59:56 pm

I could cry for the blindness of man.

Alana link
2/27/2013 08:07:04 am

I was not aware of the practice of dumping tons of "unwanted" dead fish back into the ocean. I did a little research and found out that this is a common practice in the shrimp catching industry. In the United States, I found the statistic online that "shrimpers catch around 114,000 tons of shrimp a year but discard four times that weight in snappers, mackerel, Atlantic croaker, crabs and porgies." This sickens me.

Francene Stanley link
2/27/2013 06:01:01 pm

I agree. Why can't they use every fish they catch? How could they wantonly kill fish?


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    Author

    Francene Stanley, author of many published novels. If you like my writing, why not consider purchasing one of my books? You'll see them on the sidebar below.
    Born in Australia, I moved to Britain half way through my long life.

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