Overfishing

Most of the overfishings in the international sense are a product of misuse.

The dawn of the oil age was fairly recent. Although the stuff was used to waterproof boats in the Middle East 6,000 years ago, extracting it in earnest began only in 1859 after an oil strike in Pennsylvania.[…]It was used to make kerosene, the main fuel for artificial lighting after overfishing led to a shortage of whale blubber. Other liquids produced in the refining process, too unstable or smoky for lamplight, were burned or dumped.

Waitrose has become the first UK supermarket to suspend the sale of mackerel because of overfishing and will start pointing customers toward herring and other species. The Marine Conservation Society warned last year that stocks were at breaking point owing to overfishing, and it downgraded mackerel from a three to a four on its five-point Good Fish Guide sustainability scale. Kerry Lyne of the MCS praised Waitrose’s move, saying: “To keep favourites like mackerel on the menu, we need support right across the supply chain with fishing kept within sustainable limits.” A University of East Anglia study published in January urged supermarkets to encourage customers to expand their fish diet to include more environmentally friendly and locally caught fish, such as herring and sardines. Last September, the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) recommended that mackerel fishing in the north-east Atlantic be cut by 70% to help replenish numbers to a sustainable level after overexploitation. […] In December, the UK agreed to reduce mackerel fishing by 48%, well short of the cut the ICES had called for. […] The latest statistics show that from May, the mackerel catch in the northeast Atlantic will no longer meet the requirements set out by the Sustainable Seafood Coalition. Tagholm called for administrative change: “The responsibility cannot lie entirely with retailers or shoppers. It is the government that sets catch limits, and the government that has failed, year after year, to devise a cogent strategy to end overfishing once and for all. Now, with staple fish like cod and mackerel on the brink of disaster, it must act immediately.” Waitrose will promote the sale of herring, sardines and sea bass as sustainable and nutritious alternatives to mackerel.