Last gasp for big game fish

In the Guardian today (and on the website)


Plenty more fish in the sea?

The ocean's great predator fish are disappearing fast. Numbers have dropped by 90% in just 50 years. Time to give up those swordfish steaks, says Ian Sample

Thursday May 15, 2003
The Guardian

'Fish, I love you and respect you very much. But I will kill you dead before this day ends." Tough words from Hemingway's aged Santiago, who nearly kills himself landing the mother of all marlin, only to watch it get ripped to shreds by sharks on the way home. But the great battle of man versus fish played out in The Old Man and the Sea is rapidly becoming a romantic fantasy of a lost age. The marlin are disappearing now; sharks are disappearing faster. And those two great predators are not alone in their struggle for survival.

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Couldn't agree more. All of the great fish deserve better and once they've gone they've gone. Not just the marlin and sharks but the other billfish like sails, swordfish and spearfish are meeting the same fate. Sainsbury's last time I looked, sell Marlin steaks (from Mauritius longliners so the store manager told me)and by the look of them from extremely small fish, most of which will be one/two year fish in the 40-50lb range. Game fishermen practice catch and release and don't generally fish for sharks anyway (they're considered too low in the order of game fish to be worth bothering with) so it's the commercial netsmen and longliners that are doing the damage, including the oriental boats that hack off the fins for soup and medicinal use and kick the dying carcase back into the sea. I don't personally think the meat tastes that good. Big problem for these fish is that they are ocean pelagics and are not coastal fish. Most are therefore caught in international waters. Its down to the countries that market them to take action.