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Fish forever?
Fish n' chips
Tapas tree
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Fish forever - have your cake and eat it all?
Why is the concept of sustainable fishing so difficult, certainly for those involved, to understand?
 Surely, ask the same people how they would anticipate feeding their family forever if they only had a vegetable plot and a dozen free range chickens and the answer would come to them.
In fact, the furthest thing from their minds would be to slaughter all the chickens, feast merrily, and then … and then? Fish forever? So at what point does the fishing industry think that it can scoop all the fish from the sea without fear of their future livelihoods or the future of the oceans?
A retort from every fisherman at every corner of the globe, would probably be, "If I don't go fishing today, then someone else will. I can't afford to lose out."
Yet the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) scientists have estimated that the world's fishing fleet could be reduced by 53% and still maintain the same catch levels.
When the UK suffered a salmonella scare in 1992, guess what? We went without eggs. We managed. More recently with a BSE crisis, worried for our health and, comically, at the thought we might loose our balance overnight, we consumed less beef. What an adaptable bunch we are.
But, more realistically, our stoic British grin-and-bare-it reaction to it was out of fear for ourselves. Perhaps a medically-linked fish alert might be the only way to make us moderate our fish eating habits.
Or maybe the news from the FAO's recent report on the state of world fisheries and aquaculture, announcing that between 71 and 78% of the world's major fish stocks are either depleted, overexploited, or fully exploited, should ring alarm bells and jolt us into thinking of our family feeding themselves forever from just a dozen free range chickens and a vegetable plot.
We simply can't have our cake and eat it all. A worrying thought when Seafish - the government body (with a smudge of cake all around its mouth), is busy preparing its third annual Seafood Week in October. During this eight day extravaganza, the organization is planning to encourage the British public to eat more fish.
Eat more fish? Which bit doesn't Seafish understand? I can only imagine the board sitting down to that ill-advised blow-out chicken feast.
Yet, in anticipation of collapsed fish stocks, we're turning more attention to Aquaculture - or fish farming to you and me. Farms or Aquaculture centres are being established all over the world, including Scotland, with mixed reaction.
Good for meeting the demand of the fish-eating public, bad for potentially introducing toxins into our diet and pollution to our rivers and oceans. Sustainable fisheries? Shhh! No one mention the colossal volume of fish caught and used to make fish meal to feed these fish in the first place.
When will we learn?
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