"So apparently our kids won’t be able to eat cod or salmon. And our grandkids probably won’t even know what they are." I’m used to some level of oddness from my best friend Aoife but this statement made even me pause, and not just because it had absolutely nothing to do with anything we were talking about. Even as someone who does not eat fish on a regular basis and generally tries to avoid it, this statement was rather alarming. We consider fish as such an everyday food item that it never struck me that there was a limited supply of them and that we are eating far more than we should be and that stocks are fast depleting. In fact as early as 1997 experts were referring to the issue as a crisis and making it clear that this was not a problem that was going to disappear unless something drastic was done about it. However almost 15 years later and the situation has not improved – in fact it has got worse. One of the main problems is poor management of stock levels and the prevalence of overfishing- in short there are too many fishermen trying to catch too few fish. The problem is most noticeable in Europe, particularly off the coast of Britain and Ireland. The number of cod in the North Sea has decreased dramatically in recent years and some experts believe that it, among other species including the Atlantic salmon are at serious risk from extinction. In fact in a meeting in Rome of the Food and Agriculture Organization (a committee within the UN) it was noted that in the last ten years “the global trade in fish and fish products has nearly doubled in value” and that “the proportion of fish stocks estimated to be healthy has declined from 40 percent in the mid-1970s to 15 percent in 2008.” The oceans, although vast they may be, cannot continue to keep up with our demand for fish. However the solution is more complicated than putting quotas in place. Although there has been a ban on cod fishing in the North Sea this leads to unemployment for many fishermen a career that is already tough enough to succeed in. Illegal fishing is a dilemma for the E.U in trying to deal with the crisis and the fact that it is very difficult to monitor boats only makes the issue more complicated. The most likely solution is not the outright banning of fishing but to increase the number of and our dependency on sustainable fisheries.

http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/un-study-reveals-state-of-worlds-fisheries-gr/blog/32762
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2002/dec/16/fish.food