Commercial Fishing Gets Failing Grade

  • Countries are getting bad grades because there’s a lot of over-fishing going on. (Photo by Stephen Ausmus, courtesy of the USDA)

A new study out in the journal Nature grades countries on their ocean
fishing practices. Rebecca Williams reports even the top countries are not
getting a passing grade:

Transcript

A new study out in the journal Nature grades countries on their ocean
fishing practices. Rebecca Williams reports even the top countries are not
getting a passing grade:

The US, Canada, and Norway are some of the countries doing the best job.
That means they’re fishing in a responsible way.

But they all come in at 60%. That’d be a D, maybe a D-plus.

Tony Pitcher is the main author of the study.

“Wasn’t very encouraging actually that even the top scoring countries were
not really that good. So it wasn’t anything to write home about – we were
at the top but it wasn’t a great field. At the bottom end some countries
were just disastrous. More than half the countries didn’t even pass the
40%.”

Countries are getting bad grades because there’s a lot of over-fishing going
on. There’s illegal fishing. And there’s a big problem with nets and traps
getting lost. They can snare marine mammals, birds and fish.

Tony Pitcher says it’s not always easy to know where your fish came from.
But he says you can look for a blue and white label when you’re shopping.
It’ll say Marine Stewardship Council on it.

For The Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

Related Links