This practice occurs when boats decide to dispose of fish which they catch but cannot land or derive income from, or when they have caught more fish than they are allowed to land, or they discard the less valuable fish in order to make more space for more valuable fish.
For example, the report cites the situation with Dover sole, for which six kilos of sea creatures are caught incidentally and discarded for every kilo found in the fishmonger. Similarly, catching one kilo of Norwegian lobster or scampi results in five kilos of bycatch.
The European Union recently declared that 88 per cent of the fisheries stocks of the EU are overfished, compared with 25 per cent on average globally. Bycatch is a major contributor to overfishing, providing even more impetus to address this unsustainable and illogical practice
If I were nature’s CEO, I’d be cooking up some airborne AIDS. Humanity is a plague in large numbers.
What people don’t want to face is that for us to avoid these bycatches, we need to reform or reject industrial fishing and pick the old ways instead. That means no cheap fish. That means an end to the illusion that we can all do whatever we wanna do whenever we wanna do it.
But if we don’t grow up and face that reality, we genocide nature. It’s a more complicated decision than voting for an entitlement president, but it’s one we have to face.
I know how I’ll vote.
Tags: peak