Is the North Sea overfished?
The European Union recently declared that 88 percent of the fisheries stocks of the EU are overfished, compared with 25 percent on average globally. Bycatch is a major contributor to overfishing, the report points out. Every year several million sharks and up to 250,000 sea turtles are caught as bycatch in fishing operations designed to catch other species. A special Fish Discards Summit hosted by the Scottish Government in Edinburgh in September heard that fishermen in Scotland are being forced to throw away up to £40 million worth of fish every year. The level of waste was revealed by Fisheries Secretary Richard Lochhead to fishermen, scientists, conservationists and Norwegian government representatives at the meeting called to work out how to reduce the dumping of marketable fish at sea. “Discards are bad news. Bad news for fishermen, bad news for consumers and bad news for the environment,” said Lochhead, who blamed European rules for the discarding of almost a million tonnes of No
