Cod Extinct in 20 Years

In the 1970s there was a comedy series called Dads Army, it was based on the antics of a Home Guard platoon during the second world war in Britain. The series has become a classic and sparked many catch phrases. One from an old Scotsman was “Were Doomed, were doomed”

There are times when I almost feel like I am reciting that catch phrases almost like a mantra. As while I really do believe we can stop and reverse the environmental degradation that is impacting us all, all the science is showing that we really are in serious trouble.

In research carried out by Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada, on the Cod population in the Northern Atlantic, shows that it is in terminal decline. In fact the research shows that the cod is facing extinction in twenty years.

The Grand Banks, a major fishery off the coast of Newfoundland collapsed in the 1990s. That put forty thousand people out of a job. While this was a wake up call and did directly lead to the setting up of the Marine Stewardship Council and its members do operate sustainably, MSC fish only represents seven percent of the global catch. In the last fifty years the volume of fish caught has increased by five fold. Not all of that is for human consumption as about twenty percent, a fifth of the fish caught is used as crop fertiliser.

At the moment there are a billion people that are reliant on fish protein as their main or only source of protein Therefore if we loose the fish that's a billion people that will face malnutrition. As usual it is the people that are poor that will loose out the most.

Yet again the problem is and has been a lack of political leadership here. I cant help but think of the way that the US government was able to find seven hundred billion dollars of tax payers money to bail out the banks, and other countries have instituted similar policies and similar sums of money to save their banks, yet much smaller sums of money would have saved the fishing industry. By paying the fishermen not to fish then around the world fish stocks could have been allowed to recover. But as this new research shows, as published in the Journal Science, this is one fight that it looks like we have lost. That will mean that there will be millions of jobs lost, across the world when the fishing industry inevitably disappears.

The only way we can now save the seas is to stop all commercial fishing and only allow the sustenance fishing by the peoples that are reliant on fish to sustain life. In much the same way that indigenous peoples are allowed to hunt whales to sustain their populations.

We have to move away from the quick profit economics, we have already seen the effects that has on our economy via the credit crunch and the recession. We have to move towards an economic model that is sustainable. By raping the seas in the way we have been, we will loose this valuable source of food. As well as the beauty that feeds our soul.

Just as with climate change we ignore the science at our peril.