February 27th

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.