Eco Friendly House And Garden

Does restricting the number of certain threatened fish from being brought to land help them?

By making a fixed level for fishing fleets to ‘land’ and sell certain fish was implemented with the intention of making sure that over-fishing at peak breeding times, migration overload, and where numbers we low was restricted.

This, in theory, means that where fish are threatened most (i.e; where over-fishing could irreversibly damage the breeding population as a whole) there are restrictions in place to stop fishermen from expoliting them when they are at their most vulnerable.

However, it doesn’t quite work out like that.

It’s All In The Small Print:
The first problem is that fishing quotas are only applicable when the fish are taken ashore to be weighed and cold, so that officials at the ports can tell who has caught what fish, where and when.

Secondly, fishing nets are not species specific – they aren’t even fish specific – and most fish, mammals and crustaceans die trapped in nets waiting for the fishermen to collect them.

So; if you have gone over your ‘landable’ cod quotas, but just happen to have found 100 dead cod trapped in your nets – what are you going to do with them?

Option 1: Take them back to shore and risk a huge fine?
Option 2: Stay at sea until you have eaten them all?
Option 3: Throw them overboard, dead?

I’m afraid the answer is Option 3. All these dead fish that were accidently caught in nets are wasted needlessly – ironically caught in this ‘quota’ trap.

So What Is The Answer?
Unfortunately, this isn’t an easy one. Allowing ‘already dead, by-product’ cod to be taken ashore rather than wasted would be a sneaky loophole that fishermen could use to go out and just catch cod anyway.

However, allowing them to be killed anyway and just thrown away is the very anti-thesis of setting up the quotas anyway – I mean what good are dead fish at creating a sustainable fishery?

It is very easy when you hear some good news; “we are putting a limit on the number of certain endangered fish from being used for human food” to somehow allow it to be translated in our heads as: “fisherman can’t catch too much of threatened fish species”.

We failed to think of all the others things that this statement means: It means that fishermen will still be overfishing other fish not in the quota; it also doesn’t change the fact that we already ‘accidently’ catch and kill dozens of other aqautic species that are not financially viable to take to shore (boats are only so big); and it doesn’t even mention what would happen to any of the fish they caught if they have reached that quota?

But, thankfully, someone has. Someone (who luckily happened to be the very famous and very influential Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall) has now made this needless waste of threatened fish and other marine life public, and even has a campaign in place to help us all do something about it!

Visit his well chosen website: www.fishfight.net, join the likes of Stephen Fry and Richard Branson, and do you part for the fish!

You can also watch his recent documentary on this topic – and get some really great tips on sustainable shopping too!

photo credit: derekkeats

It’s Monday and you haven’t started cooking dinner yet – so make it the start of your ‘Meat Free Mondays’ campaign!

If you are not already a vegetarian, vegan or a meat-free Monday participant – then maybe you could try it for a few weeks and see if it really makes that much difference to your lives.

There are many celebrities who have given up meat altogether including Brad Pitt and Clint Eastwood, but it can be a difficult life to continue of your diet revolves around processed foods and take-aways.

So, if you can manage to eat at home on the rather sensible day of Monday, you could easily make it a meat-free one.  For example sausage and mash with gravy; pie, chips and peas and even a roast dinner could be made using meat-free ingredients – and I have had them all and they were yummy!

And if you are eating meat on up to 6 other days of the week, I’m sure you won’t really think anything of it – however, you could be making a huge difference to people, wildlife and habitats across the globe!

Benefits In A Nutshell:
There are many good things that can come out of cutting out meat from your diet – even if it’s only for 1 day. As don’t forget that it won’t be just you – so multiply the meat your don’t eat by 1000′s of other people in your neighbourhood, and we are stopping hundreds of cattle from traipsing through the Amazon……

Meat Uses More Land To Grow – By using a field to ‘grow’ cows or sheep, we need to use another piece of land to ‘grow’ the food to feed the cows and sheep.  So meat uses more land to grow than the tasty vegetables we love.

Meat Uses More Energy To Grow – More energy goes into growing a cow than into a cauliflower – so if we ate the cauliflower instead we could save all that waiting around for the cow to be ready for slaughter.

Meat Uses New Land To Grow- More meat in our diet means more land is always needed for farming them – and in South America, we have heard that the rainforests are being cleared to feed more cattle – or more correctly, rainforests are being cleared to make us hamburgers and cheap steaks.

Meat Gives Of Methane – Cows fart!  A lot…….

Meat Cannot Be Composted – Uneaten meat cannot be composted in your garden like leftover vegetables and fruit – and may well attract vermin anyway, so the disposal of meat can become a problem for businesses – and the environment.

Vegetables Are Good For You – By taking the focus off the meat part of your dinner you may well find that you eat more vegetables in your meal instead – all good news for your health.

Your Choices:
Just as with new products and new fashions – if people don’t buy it, people won’t make it. 

So if everyone could just take 1 day a week of meat, you will see a great reduction in the meat in stores, and therefore the amount of land being used to farm them.

I’m not saying that this will be an instant reaction from the farming industry, but it will certainly make a difference over the next few years.  And from current environmental thinking we may well need to start doing this anyway.

So, why not take a stroll up the vegetarian aisle next time you are in a store and try some of the alternatives – you might quite surprise yourself with what is available, and how much you like it.

And to be honest – dinner guests will eat whatever you cook them as long as it’s tasty – and if you don’t tell the kids or the partner when you serve up a fantastic vegetarian meal - they probably won’t even know the difference and so you can easily convert dozens of people you know without any fuss!