Fish Food
There
is a growing consensus that the world’s marine ecosystem is in deep trouble
with overfishing, pollution and other human-assisted changes (e.g. global
warming) having a disastrous effect on fish stocks (Erlandson and Rick 2010)
According
to Charles Clover in his book The End of the Line, recently made into a
successful documentary film, over-fishing will mean extinction for the most
popular fish species over the next decades. He argues that the way we currently
consume fish is completely unsustainable, especially since (as we saw in the
last chapter) many fish are discarded due to EU quota legislation.
Declining
fish stocks have become an international issue, the concern of the European
Union as well as national governments and the subject of increasing political
debate. It has led to heated arguments between environmentalists, campaigning
journalists and representatives of the fishing industry. A review of the
current situation can be found here
Debate
continues because there are still uncertainties about what the ‘natural’ state
of fisheries should be and this is where history and archaeology can help to
provide important baseline data.
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