Ok, I had to do something to offset the abysmal statistics and suppositions re the health of our world wide ocean fisheries. Plus, it is about time for my quarterly attempt at matching Moldy Chum’s or The Shooting Head’s Provocateur Factor.

Andrew Purvis provides a lengthy and I must say balanced presentation of assessments re the state of the varied ocean fisheries and what other nations or alliances are doing to rebuild certain fisheries or forestall total decimation.

“Worse still, after stripping our own seas bare, we have “exported fishing capacity to the waters of developing countries”, Professor Roberts warns. Off Mauritania, Senegal and other West African countries, fleets from the rich industrial north are “fishing in a totally unsustainable way with minimal oversight by European countries”. In return for plundering the oceans, which deprives local people of food, and artisanal fishermen of their livelihood, these vessels pay minimal fees that impoverished countries are happy to accept. “It is a mining operation,” Professor Roberts says, “a rerun of the exploitation of terrestrial wealth that happened in colonial days. This is colonialism in a new guise, albeit with a respectable cloak in the form of access agreements.”  (Andrew Purvis @ The Observer)