The deep sea is the largest habitat on earth and incredibly important to humans, but it faces many threats – from increased human exploitation to the effects of climate change. As this exploitation expands…
The Mediterranean Sea holds some of the most heavily fished waters in the world, and a recent paper has revealed the extent to which the sea – which has 19 nations on its shores – has been exploited. Academics…
When the UK Environmental Audit Committee investigated the issue of protecting our marine environment last month, it concluded that there had been a woeful lack of decisive action from the government so…
The ocean, seen from a beach or from a plane, seems vast, ancient and invulnerable. It’s hard to imagine that 90% of life on earth lives below the waves, across 1.3 billion cubic kilometres of water and…
It was hailed as a great victory for conservation, common sense and people power. Last year the European Commission finally voted to phase out the shameful practice of discarding hundreds of thousands…
Clive Fox, Scottish Association for Marine Science
Pity the poor consumer who wants to make informed decisions about eating cod. Conflicting reports on the state of cod stocks range from misinterpretation of the science – such as the Telegraph’s story…
Australians love seafood. We each consumed an average of 25 kilograms of seafood in 2010 – an amount that has increased significantly over the last 30 years. Worldwide, fish consumption now exceeds beef…
Some of the world’s most vulnerable marine habitats are being failed by the conservation orders put in place to protect them. As the Environmental Audit Committee meets to discuss how it will implement…
When the Russian owned factory ship Oleg Naydenov was recently seized by armed Senegalese commandos for illegal fishing in Senegal’s exclusive territorial 12-mile fishing zone, it shone a much-needed spotlight…
In European waters controlled by the EU Common Fisheries Policy, the discarding of fish overboard has long been condemned by environmentalists and regretted by fishers. According to the UN Food and Agriculture…
In 1883, the eminent English biologist Thomas Henry Huxley made his now infamous proclamation on the infinite bounty of the sea: Probably all the great sea fisheries are inexhaustible; that is to say…
Last week, the “super trawler” Abel Tasman left Australia, with far less fanfare than you might have expected. Many hail this as good news for Australian fisheries, but we believe it could be a great step…