Who's got their hands on all our fish?

[xchrom]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2012/may/29/fishing-greenpeace


Cornish fishermen Ben George flying the 'Be a Fisherman's Friend' campaign flag. The Greenpeace campaign calls for a reform of European fishing policy so that it supports low impact, sustainable fishermen. Photograph: David Sandison/Greenpeace

Greenpeace has spent a lot of time lately on wharves, docks, piers and beaches. The story we're hearing is the same the coast long; the UK's low-impact, small-scale fishing industry is on its last legs.

These fishermen, most of whom are part of the inshore under-10-metre fleet, tend to land high quality fish, using methods that do little or no damage to the local environment. But they aren't rewarded. Quite the contrary: despite comprising 77% of the active UK fleet, they have access to only 4% of the country's quota

So who's got their hands on all our fish? (It's worth remembering they are our indeed our fish; they're a public asset, a common resource). No one really knows who holds UK quota, but what we do know is that the answer mostly involves those with the most economic clout and ability to throw their weight around. In a gradual process bordering on privatisation by stealth, the resource of the many has fallen into the hands of a few.

As the long-time Hastings fisherman John Griffin puts it: "It's definitely the 'greener' side of the industry that's suffering. We're as morally correct as we can be, we don't hide anything and we try to be as green as possible; we're doing our best but we're the ones being pushed out."

[freshwest]

1. Likely it's the factory fishing fleets. They 'strip mine' the ocean.

And they are hard to call to account as they are not restrained by any one nation's laws. I'm sorry to hear a sustainable industry is hurting like this.

[hunter]

3. I'd like to see the "factory fishing fleets" outlawed.

Maybe we could raise tilapia in power plant cooling ponds instead.

[freshwest]

4. Who will outlaw them, though? They trawl the open seas and are complete operations, that is,

They 'mine' and then process, freeze and sell at the ports they visit. Then the money goes into their offshore accounts. Everything they do is out of the public eye. The use their private ships, fly in private planes, build their mansions in tax-free countries, using temporary labor with no clout. They incorporate in countries which don't demand regulation or any oversight. I suspect this is the same type as the shipping magnates of Greece that don't pay taxes.

Some make the 'fish stick' products. A person I know associated with it, warned me to never eat any of that, but it's fed to school children. He said the operations that do it literally scrape the ocean floor, and take in everything, and most of what is in them is not the fish they advertise. They grind and bleach it on-board and then bread it to sell.

As far as I know, it's legal when they're outside national fishing boundaries. But all the fish, save those farmed, are from the ocean for them to take, and they depend on cheap labor to do their dirty deeds for them. I think that only Occupy can stop this with their global focus. Okay, now I've gone and depressed myself.

[GliderGuider]

5. I doubt that Occupy or a global shift in consciousness will do it.

What will stop us from strip-mining the oceans is the disappearance of fish. Coming within two decades to an ocean near you.

[XemaSab]

6. The good news being that commercial extinction

and extinction extinction are two different things.

[Nihil]

7. Here's to the former for the industrial corporations!

(Personal extinction of senior tiers wouldn't be a bad thing either)

[GreenPartyVoter]

2. That's what's happening in Maine. The huge commercial fishing fleets are wiping everything out. It's

all the small family-owned boats can do to get anything and stay in business.