At the instigation of Coastwise North Devon member Jay Nicholson, The Plough showed Charles Clover’s film about the plight of world fish stocks, The End of the Line, on Thursday 24th September. The audience included about 30 Coastwise members, and our guest Torridge MP Geoffrey Cox (seen here with Jay receiving excerpts of the Coastwise Oral History interviews).
All the key messages were in the film and experts confirmed our worst fears of no fish in the sea in 40 years if we don’t change our ways, but they were hopeful that there was still time to save this irreplaceable natural food supply.
The UK has a good opportunity to start this process by using the Marine Bill which comes before Parliament next session, though at present it misses more opportunities than it delivers. We must maintain the pressure.
The film focused on the plight of the Bluefin Tuna, took in the cod fishery collapse, the collateral damage of trawling, with its by-catch, discards and rape of the sea bed, industrial scale fishing and the damage to indigenous in-shore fisheries, fishing down the food chain, and the alarming information that it takes 5 kg of fishmeal (ie anchovies, sardines etc) to deliver 1 kg of farmed salmon…and much more besides.
The documentary style included several influential talking heads: Charles Clover, Callum Roberts, and Daniel Pauly and others, and multitudes of fish.
The key messages are: Buy only sustainably caught fish, campaign for no-take marine reserves, and talk to your MP!
Our thanks to Malcolm Roberts for encouraging Torridge MP Geoffrey Cox to attend and to Geoffrey Cox for his evident interest and responsiveness to the film’s messages and to Coastwise concern.