EU fisheries deal - A last throw of dice for fish stocks

Some years ago, as ever more industrialised commercial fishing decimated fish population after fish population, conservationists suggested that the last generation of humans who would eat wild fish taken from our seas had been born.

This was a claim, a warning, almost beyond comprehension, but the presence of voracious super trawlers on many of the world’s oceans seemed to make it at least possible. The scale of those Goliath floating factories seemed to make nature and its great abundance an under-siege David.

One, the Annelies Ilena, formerly the Irish super trawler Atlantic Dawn, can process 350 tonnes of fish a day, carry 3,000 tonnes of fuel, and store 7,000 tonnes of catch. Our oceans, even the most generous, could not satisfy that demand on a long-term basis. The unfortunate and wasteful practice of dumping perfectly good fish — 2m tonnes a year — not covered by quota, added to the sense things were terribly out of kilter.