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will be four."
Anyone who thinks national governments behave uniquely selfishly about pollution or trade should take a look at the record on fishing. No minister wants to have a row with his country's few but allegedly romantic commercial catchers. Captain Birdseye will make a formidable fuss, and the public cares nothing for the plight of his scaly victims. There is a persistent nationalistic belief that excesses are only committed by others - the Spanish and Japanese dominate our own demonology. In truth, there are no innocents. All netsmen are striving to claw a living amid rising costs and declining stocks. Inspections are so inadequate in many places that nobody is effectively monitoring atrocities attested by a wealth of anecdotage.
One of the few modest recovery stories is that of the Atlantic salmon. This is the almost single-handed achievement of an Icelander, Orri Vigfusson. Despairing at the plight of a fish he loves, 15 years ago he started the North Atlantic Salmon Fund. Its record in curbing commercial fishing, buying out drift-netters and lobbying governments is astonishing.
Cynics say that Vigfusson makes headway only because he has won the backing of rich sportsmen who like to catch salmon with rod and line. But part of his campaign has been the promotion of catch-and-release. Many rivers now get the income from sport anglers, while their fish survive. The consequence of Vigfusson's crusade is a precarious but undoubted revival in the fortunes of the Atlantic salmon. He will take another notable step forward if he succeeds in his campaign to restrict salmon farming, which has done terrible ecological damage in Scotland and Norway.
Yet salmon is only one, relatively privileged, species. The poor cod has no such smart friends, and we have almost done for it. Newfoundland employed 44,000 people in fishing and processing until the catastrophic collapse of the early 1990s. Further south, there is deepening concern about tuna, and some shark and marlin species. Most experts agree that the only hope of restoring some sanity to the world's fisheries is to end the dominant influence of the commercial industry. To an extraordinary extent, governments dance to a tune called by those who make their living catching fish.
Charles Clover observes that British net-fishing today employs about as many people as lawnmower manufacturing, yet historic sentiment gives it amazing clout. The situation is much worse in Ireland and Spain, chronic exponents of reckless policy. EU officials claim that matters are improving, that excesses are being contained. Few experts believe them.
All credit to Greenpeace for identifying the simple thing each of us can do, to fight back against the threat to the oceans: buy fish from Marks & Spencer or Waitrose. These stores, according to the new survey, have by far the best record of selling sustainable and legitimately sourced species.
We need to start caring about fish, not easy when they lack fur, soulful eyes and other attributes that make amateur greens go gooey about selected fauna. But what is happening every day in the oceans is as great a scandal as elephant and rhino murder on Africa's plains. If it continues, the consequences for our descendants will be even more bitter.
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