Saturday cartoon by Ralph Underhill

Mark 4 Comments

 

Mark writes; Three haddock fisheries down-graded and no longer on Marine Conservation Society ‘Green to Eat’ list (see here and here).

 

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4 Replies to “Saturday cartoon by Ralph Underhill”

  1. I particularly like the Trump-styled octopus. A Scottish fishery leader was on the evening news complaining that the MCS has few proper scientisits and weren’t qualified to make this kind of judgement on fish stocks. In fact, he went on, fish stocks are great, there have been landings of big catches of haddock. I’m not sure whether he was deliberately missing the point, or just blithely unaware that if you rip loads of haddock out of the ocean there will inevitably be less left to reproduce.

    1. Alex Salmond used to be very big on criticizing those trying to preserve fish stocks as well – the fact that his constituency had a fair number of fishing boats might have something to do with that. Well that’s career politics for you rather than the genuine conscientious type. I’ve heard rumours of a captain in Musselburgh who keeps breaking the limits, but just pays the fines as it still means he makes money, and a few years ago we had an absolute cracker of a case of illegal fishing in Scotland http://www.shetlandtimes.co.uk/2012/02/24/thirteen-shetland-fishermen-fined-470000-for-cynical-and-sophisticated-black-fish-scheme

      I’ve just started reading Callum Roberts truly excellent ‘Ocean of Life’ which is shocking in illustrating how badly we’ve over exploited and mucked up the seas, but gives fantastic ammunition to fight against special interest groups (all be it with a seeming suicidal streak) and their complacency. Recommend it very, very strongly if like me you tend to be less informed on marine rather than terrestrial conservation.

  2. And the inevitable screaming from industry that this science was bad for business and to take it away and bring them different science.

    That is everything that is wrong in the UK right there.

  3. The usual basic problem: many of us care too much about ourselves and not enough about other living things, or the land / sea itself.

    Dread to think what a bycatch cartoon of drive grouse shooting would look like too.

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