It’s a bad time to be a fish.
Via Salon comes this article from Gilt Taste.com about the threat to the menhaden populations along the mid-Atlantic coast due to overfishing. You may recall my post from January 2010 with some other links to articles about the practices of Omega Protein, Inc. and the need to enact stricter protections on menhaden stocks. It’s distressing, if unsurprising, to see that nothing has changed in the last year and a half except the further overfishing of the most critical fish in the Atlantic.
Genetically modified salmon, which grow several times larger than wild salmon and are intended exclusively for aquaculture, have been touted as a commercially viable alternative to wild-caught salmon. The FDA is still considering approval of GM salmon for human consumption based on safety concerns alone, but Fast Company reports that a new study by a Canadian university concluded that if GM salmon were to find their way into the wild, they could destroy wild stocks due to their genetic deficiencies. And environmental groups continue to argue that salmon farming itself is unsustainable and environmentally hazardous.
As if the traditional fish-and-chip shop wasn’t already losing ground due to the disappearance of cod in the North Atlantic, overfishing in European waters is reaching a tipping point. The New Economics Foundation says that July 2 is the point on the calendar they call “Fish Dependence Day”: that’s the date, they say, by which European fishing operations have caught what would be the annual limit for fish to allow fish stocks to remain sustainable. Everything caught after that date is overfishing. This Fast Company article cites the NEF’s assessment that at current rates of fishing, European fisheries will be 100% depleted by 2050 if limits aren’t imposed.
