Discarding seven million tonnes of fish an obscenity – Fishupdate.com

Discarding seven million tonnes of fish an obscenity Published:  03 October, 2008

A Scottish MEP will tell a conference on marine conservation today that it was an obscenity that an estimated 7.3 million tonnes of fish globally are dumped, dead, into the sea every year.

Opening a major conference on marine conservation in Barcelona, Struan Stevenson MEP will say: ‘According to the Food & Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) around 7.3 million tonnes of fish are being dumped overboard by fishermen around the world every year.

Although this is a dramatic fall from the estimated 27 million tonnes that FAO calculated was being dumped a decade ago, it is nothing to celebrate. The number of fish being discarded has fallen because global fish stocks are collapsing. Fishermen are catching fewer fish and therefore they are dumping fewer fish.

‘There are an estimated 850 million people in the world today suffering from hunger. It is an obscenity that we stand idly by and watch the wanton destruction of global fish stocks and the dumping of unwanted and juvenile fish on this appalling scale.’

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