The End of the Line

Subtitled 'How overfishing is changing the world and what we eat' this is an extensive and damning analysis of world fishing policies in relation to medium-term sustainability. Few people are aware that 75% of the world's fish stocks are either fully exploited or overfished, and yet we have no policies that are equal to this dire situation, Clover writes in an evocative manner about his encounters with fisheries all over the world, including the reactions of Newfoundland scientists and fishermen as the collapse of that fishery came about in the early 1990s. They did not realise how drastic the situation was until it was too late. The same spectre hangs over European waters, especially in the absence of proper policing. This means that quotas are exceeded, with many fish landed illegally. The resulting oversupply drives down prices and reinforces the need to overfish in order to pay wages and mortgages on expensive boats. Clover is right in supposing that public awareness of this situation is lamentably low. At the end of his book he proposes a way in which the European Commission could address the problems he has diagnosed, but he is not optimistic that this will come about, owing to short-term economic and political considerations. Hence his forecast of two futures: 'one requires difficult, active choices, starting now. If we don't take these choices, the other future will happen anyway'. Unfortunately this prognosis applies to almost every major ecological issue and there are no signs of the pre-emptive path being adopted.