Fishfight success!

Wednesday, 19 January 2011

The Countryside Alliance backed Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall's successful Fishfight campaign. Hugh's campaign focused on the fact that "around half of the fish caught by fishermen in the North Sea are unnecessarily thrown back into the ocean, dead. The problem is that in a mixed fishery where many different fish live together, fishermen cannot control the species that they catch. Fishing for one species often means catching another, and if people don't want them or fishermen are not allowed to land them, the only option is to throw them overboard. The vast majority of these discarded fish will die." Thanks in large part to Hugh's campaign, the EU Fisheries Commissioner Maria Damanaki has said she hopes a total ban on fish "discards" could be brought in by 2013. Read more here.