Fish

I want to talk about fish. Scotland used to have enormous fish stocks: it is to do with geology and I don't propose to go into detail now. But overfishing has affected this here as it has elsewhere. The point I wish to concentrate on is that we are using up all the fish at a rate we cannot sustain: and this is not just true in Scotland: it is europe wide.

An article at new economic foundation reports that in europe "fish dependency day" is now in early June: that is the day in any year when the total consumption of home grown fish runs out and we become dependent on fish from other parts of the world. That is worrying in terms of demand from poor countries for food: because clearly we can pay more for fish than can a person in Ghana: so they export tuna. To be sure they get money for that: but they can't get traditional food at a sensible price. The economics of that are no doubt complicated: but it is at least possible that it makes the situation of ordinary people in Ghana worse: because exports don't tend to accrue wealth to individuals in industries like this: and fishing on a commercial scale is capital intensive

More than half of the fish landed in Scotland goes to make fertiliser, animal feed, and fish oil. That is also a relatively new development (well since the 1960's) and it is notable that herring and mackeral stocks collapsed in the 1970's and had to be subject to an embargo to allow stocks to recover.

It seems to me that if there is a problem with fish for human consumption: and a problem with overfishing: then landing fish for such purposes is a bit questionable


One of the things I notice is that we in Scotland have been curiously resistant to eating fish given it is a very large part of our natural food supply: in this we are not like other nations, whose diet tends to reflect what they have got. I am not sure why that is but I believe it is at least partly explained by snobbery: fish was plentiful and cheap in the past and there was more status to be gained by eating meat.

That has been gradually changing as people have recognised the premium paid for things like shellfish in places like Spain. In the past in fishing communities crab etc were despised as "bait" and the people did not eat them much. But now the relatively wealthy city dweller is happy to pay a lot for such things and they are a big part of the fishing economy. That is all to the good both in terms of good quality diet and in terms of taste: but there is this: it also means we are eating our way down the food chain: and I do not think that is something we should ignore.

I do not know what we should be doing about this, but I do think that there needs to be some recognition that there is a serious problem with international implications

A new "sustainable" agreement for EU fisheries policy has been agreed today, though its terms are not yet published. What has been said is that they are going to stop the practice of discarding perfectly good caught fish which are not part of the fishing boat's quota or which are too small. This insane policy was well intended as part of trying to limit the catch: but since they are usually dead or dying it is not very easy to see how it a sensible way to achieve that.

It is reported that this change will not be immediate and will not apply to all species. Nor is it clear what these fish will be used for

I have not read whether the agreeement even touches on other issues such as control of fertiliser running off the land and into the sea. That matters because it causes algae blooms and where that happens it creates "dead areas" where the lack of oxygen kills everything.

Other problems arise from CO2 emissions whch are raising the acidity of the sea. So far as I can glean nobody really knows what the effect of that will be in the long term.

I had not really been very aware of the environmental and food stock issues before: but the planet is mostly sea and I cannot help but think about the fact that nearly everything is interconnected. So changes in the oceans are likely to affect stuff far beyond the immediate problem, I think.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-business-18693979

Seems some of the supermarkets are taking a stand on sustainable fishing. Apparently Iceland is taking too much mackeral and so some of the retailers in this country have decided not to buy scottish caught mackeral. The Scottish fishermen and scottish government think this is unfair and are trying to reverse the decision

It is unfair on one view: it is not the scottish fishermen who are breaching the quota. But it doesn't really mattter in the longer view: if the stocks are overfished we run the species to extinction in the end. You can only not buy what you normally buy so if they do not normallly buy from Iceland they can't take a stand there.

But somebody buys from Iceland. Rather than attempting to change the supermarkets' minds about this would the fishermen and the government not be better employed meeting with those people?