Fishing is not something nice that fathers do with sons or lads do with their mates, it’s torture and animal abuse in the name of entertainment. It has to stop in this day and age.
 

Angling

Imagine reaching for an apple on a tree and having your hand suddenly impaled by a metal hook that drags you—the whole weight of your body pulling on that one hand—out of the air and into an atmosphere in which you cannot breathe. This is what fish experience when they are hooked for “sport.”

Many people grow up fishing without ever considering the terror and suffering that fish endure when they’re impaled by a hook and pulled out of the water. Recreational anglers rarely stop to contemplate that fish are complex and intelligent individuals. In fact, if anglers treated cats, dogs, cows, or pigs the way they treat fish, they would be thrown in prison on charges of cruelty to animals. Even when anglers put fish back in the water after torturing them, many of the fish die from their stress and injuries. A 2006 study conducted during and after a Wisconsin fishing tournament found that hundreds of fish who were caught and released had died within a few days.

Why not let fish enjoy the beautiful day, too, by leaving your fishing gear at home? Click here for more ways to help fish.
¹ Associated Press, “Hundreds of Wis. Bass Found Dead After Meet,” 24 Jul. 2006.

Health Concerns

Deadly Poisons From the Deep

Fish flesh today is badly contaminated with toxic chemicals that are known to cause cancer and brain degeneration and is also the most likely of all foods to make you sick from bacterial contamination.

Think Fish Is a Health Food? Think Again.

Fish live in water that is so polluted, you would never dream of drinking it. But you’re ingesting this toxic brew—bacteria, contaminants, heavy metals and all—every time you eat fish.

	Researchers at the University of Illinois found that fish-eaters with high levels of PCBs in their blood have difficulty recalling information they have learned just 30 minutes earlier.6

Fish’s bodies absorb toxic chemicals in the water around them, and the chemicals become more concentrated as they move up the food chain. Big fish eat little fish, with the bigger fish (such as tuna and salmon) absorbing chemicals from all the other fish they eat. Fish flesh stores contaminants, such as PCBs, which cause liver damage, nervous system disorders, and fetal damage; dioxins, also linked to cancer; radioactive substances like strontium 90; and other dangerous contaminants like cadmium, mercury, lead, chromium, and arsenic, which can cause health problems ranging from kidney damage and impaired mental development to cancer.^{1,2 3,4} These toxins are stored in the body fat of humans who eat fish and remain in their bodies for decades.⁵

	Seafood is the number one cause of food poisoning in the United States.8 Seafood poisoning can result in extreme discomfort, kidney damage, nervous system damage, and even death.9

Seafood is also the number one cause of food poisoning in the United States. Many of our waterways are polluted with human and animal feces, and this waste carries dangerous bacteria like E. coli. So when we eat fish, we are exposing ourselves to the unnecessary risk of contracting a nasty bacterial illness that can lead to mild to extreme discomfort, nervous system damage, and even death.⁷

According to a report by the General Accounting Office, the seafood industry is dangerously underregulated. In fact, the Food and Drug Administration doesn’t even bother to test most fish flesh for many well-known chemical and bacterial health hazards.¹⁰

Read about the toxic mercury levels in fish »

¹The Delta Institute, “Health Impacts: PCBs”.
²Jeff Kart, “EPA Testing Saginaw River, Bay for Dioxin Levels in Sediment,” The Bay City Times, 25 Oct. 2004.
³Savannah River Site, “Eating Fish From the Savannah River,” 1 Oct. 2001.
⁴The Delta Institute.
⁵Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, Healthy Eating for Life for Children (New York: John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 2002) 54.
⁶Susan Schantz et al., “Impairments of Memory and Learning in Older Adults Exposed to Polychlorinated Biphenyls via Consumption of Great Lakes Fish,” Environmental Health Perspectives, Jun. 2001.
⁷Reuters, “CSPI: Seafood, Eggs Biggest Causes of Food Poisoning in U.S,” CNN, 7 Aug. 2000.
⁸Reuters.
⁹eMedicine, “Food Poisoning Symptoms,”.
¹⁰Center for Science in the Public Interest, news release, “GAO Gives Failing Grade to FDA Seafood HACCP Program,” 13 Feb. 2001.

Don’t eat fish, it’s bad for you a new scientific study reveals, as reported in the Independent. Mercury found in seafood could damage an unborn foetus and increase the risk of heart disease and stroke in men. And of course eating fish doesn’t do any of the individual fish any favours, not to mention the health of the oceans.

Fish contaminated with mercury ‘pose worldwide threat to health’

A worldwide warning about the risks of eating mercury-contaminated fish is to be issued by an international group of scientists today.

Three times more mercury is falling from the sky than before the Industrial Revolution 200 years ago, the scientists say.

Fish absorb the toxic chemical, which pollutes the seas, posing a risk especially to children and women of childbearing age. The role of low-level pollutants such as lead and mercury on the growing brain has been known for decades and measures have been taken to reduce exposure to a minimum. But the scientists say more must be done.

The warning is based on five papers by mercury specialists summarising the current state of knowledge on the chemical published in the international science journal Ambio. Called the Madison Declaration on Mercury Pollution, it presents 33 key findings from four expert panels over the past year. Every member of the four panels backed the declaration which was endorsed by more than 1,000 scientists at an international conference on mercury pollution in Madison, Wisconsin, in the US last August.

However, it runs counter to research by British scientists last month which found pregnant women who ate the most fish had children who were more advanced, with higher IQs and better physical abilities.

The British researchers said that while mercury is known to harm brain development, fish also contain omega-3 fatty acids and other nutrients which are essential to brain development. They studied 9,000 families taking part in the Children of the 90s project at the University of Bristol and concluded, in The Lancet, that the risks of eating fish were outweighed by the benefits.

The US scientists focused on the risks of mercury which they say now constitute a “public health problem in most regions of the world”. In addition to its toxic effects on the human foetus, new evidence indicates it may increase the risk of heart disease, particularly in adult men.

While developed countries have reduced mercury emissions over the past 30 years, these have been offset by increased emissions from developing nations.

The uncontrolled use of the metal in small-scale gold mining is contaminating thousands of sites around the world, putting 50 million inhabitants of mining regions at risk and contributing 10 per cent of the global burden of the pollutant attributable to human activities in the atmosphere.

The global spread of the threat is revealed in increased mercury concentrations now being detected in fish-eating species in remote areas of the planet. The impact on marine eco-systems may lead to population declines in these species and in fish stocks.

Professor James Wiener, of the University of Wisconsin, said: “The policy implications of these findings are clear. Effective national and international policies are needed to combat this global problem.”

In the US, official government advice is for pregnant women to limit their consumption of all seafood, including white fish, oily fish and shellfish, to no more than 12oz (340g) a week in order to limit their exposure to mercury.

In the UK, the Food Standards Agency advises expectant mothers to avoid shark, swordfish and marlin and to limit their consumption of tuna, because these are the fish with the highest levels of mercury.

The key findings

* Three times more mercury is falling from the sky today than before the Industrial Revolution

* Eating fish is the primary way most people are exposed to the toxic metal

* There is solid scientific evidence of the toxic effects of mercury on the developing foetus

* Mercury exposure now constitutes a public health problem in most regions of the world

* New evidence suggests exposure to mercury may increase the risk of heart disease and stroke in men

* Increased mercury emissions from developing countries over the past 30 years have outstripped declines in the developed world

* Increasing mercury concentrations are now being detected in fish-eating wildlife in remote areas of the planet

[VVF Fact Sheet]

For those out there that haven’t seen it, here is Earthlings on Google Video.

The article from the delivers again the bad, old news that our oceans are being fished to a barren, extinct wasteland. And this does not even touch upon the agonising deaths of the countless millions of individual fish that are killed in the process.

The madness of the over-fishing of our oceans shows no signs of abating. A research paper presented at the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Francisco yesterday shows that, as fish stocks in coastal waters become more and more depleted, trawlers are moving further out to sea.

This is incredibly foolish on the part of the fishing fleets that are engaging in this practice. Deep-sea fish such as the orange roughy
 

and the grenadier are slow growing and do not breed in large numbers. The roughy can live for more than a century and takes decades to reach sexual maturity. This means it is especially vulnerable to over-fishing.

A survey of deep-sea fish living in the north-west Atlantic has shown that 40 per cent of species for which data are available are already in decline. By over-exploiting these remote stocks, fishermen are destroying their own future livelihood.

These fleets are also wrecking marine biodiversity in the areas in which they operate. Bottom trawling is responsible for the loss of more than 95 per cent of the coral from deep-sea reefs. The dragnets of the trawlers destroy in the space of a few hours pristine ecosystems that have often taken thousands of years to grow. In the process, the homes of countless rare species are lost. The destruction of the coral also destroys a valuable natural record of the earth’s changing climate. This is ecological vandalism.

What makes this rape of the seas even more outrageous is that our governments are subsidising the process to the tune of $150m (£80m) a year. Twelve states provide fuel subsidies for their fishermen to make the long voyages into unregulated international waters, including Japan, Spain, South Korea, Russia, Australia, Ukraine, France and Iceland. According to researchers at the University of British Columbia, without subsidies such expeditions would be uneconomical.

The desire of governments to support their fishing communities is understandable. But it makes no sense to sponsor over-fishing. There is only one sane course of action: the subsidies should end, bottom trawling should be outlawed and a system of strict international regulation for high seas fisheries must be established.

The warnings of what will happen otherwise are unequivocal. According to a major scientific study last year there will be virtually nothing left to fish from the seas by the middle of the century if current fishing trends continue. We are at risk of wiping out one of mankind’s oldest sources of food and doing untold damage to one of our planet’s fundamental ecosystems.

There is a lot of whaling news kicking about at the moment. Possibly due to a combination of the current push to further enable whaling and possibly due to the media attention that Sea Shepherd are garnering - and yes, they even have managed to earn themselvs the label of ‘terrorist’!

Japanese whalers and a group of self-styled environmental “pirates” called a temporary truce today to save the lives of two activists who spent seven hours adrift in the freezing waters of the Southern Ocean.

A dinghy carrying the two campaigners from the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society got lost in fog during a violent confrontation with the Nisshin Maru, a Japanese factory ship which is hunting a thousand whales in the name of “scientific research”.

It was the latest incident in an increasingly dangerous struggle being fought in the watery wilderness of the Antarctic.

Sea Shepherd dinghies attempted to bolt metal plates over outlets in the hull of the Japanese ship, to prevent the outflow of the blood of butchered whales. The Japanese government said that two sailors suffered minor injuries after being struck or splashed in the eyes by canisters of butyric acid, a harmless but noxious “stink bomb” fired from the anti-whaling ship.

“We wanted to remind them what rotting whale flesh smells like,” Jonny Vasic, the international director of Sea Shepherd, told The Times by satellite telephone from the ship, Robert Hunter.

“When they see us, they run, and when they’re on the run they can’t kill whales. Whales are living, not dying, when we are around.”

The two activists got lost in fog after their satellite navigation and radio equipment failed. Sea Shepherd called off their “action” and began to search for the missing dinghy, with the help of the Nisshin Maru. The two men, an Australian and an American, were found unharmed after seven hours. They later said they had tied their boat to an iceberg for protection from icy winds and to stop them drifting away.

Sea Shepherd is lead by Paul Watson, a founder of Greenpeace who broke away to form his own more radical group. Its confrontational and sometimes violent tactics are opposed even by those who denounce Japan’s whaling programme, such as Greenpeace and the governments of Australia and New Zealand.

“It really puts the cause of conservation backwards,” Ian Campbell, the Australian environment minister, said last month. “I implore Captain Watson to comply with the law of the sea and not do anything to put at risk other vessels on the high seas and therefore human life.”

The flagship, Farley Mowat, is equipped with a “hydraulic can opener” which could seriously damage the hull of another vessel. Hideki Moronuki of the Japan Fisheries Agency said: “This accident caused by Sea Shepard is an illegal act and very dangerous not only for the Japanese fleet but for themselves.

“They are threatening people’s lives. We strongly protest and request them to stop immediately. Their conduct is that of pirates – we call them ’Eco-Terrorists’.”

Sea Shepherd justifies its actions with the claim that the Japanese are themselves breaking the law by hunting endangered whales. The Nisshin Maru carries out its hunt in the name of scientific research, but almost all the 1000 animals targeted this year will find their way on to the commercial market.

“It’s like taking the gun out of the hands of a bank robber, or stopping an ivory poacher,” said Mr Vasic. “These are criminals perpetrating illegal acts.”

Today’s confrontation was the climax to a five-week chase in which two Sea Shepherd vessels, the Farley Mowat and Robert Hunter, attempted to find the Japanese whalers in millions of square miles of ocean. Sea Shepherd claims that the Japanese Government has been tracking its two boats using satellite imagery and passing on the information to the whalers to help them evade detection.

In desperation, the organisation offered to pay US $25,000 to any member of the Australian or New Zealand military who leaked the co-ordinates of the fleet. Both countries have been tracking the Japanese fleet, and last week New Zealand evacuated a sick whaler by helicopter.

But the organisation says that it will not be paying out the reward, having found the whalers yesterday through its own efforts. “After five weeks it was getting very discouraging,” said Mr Vasic. “We had a hunch where they were based on past experience, and we hid out in an ice field where it’s difficult for them to track us because they can’t identify the wake.”

To complicate matters further, a ship owned by Greenpeace is also making its way towards the area, having been given the co-ordinates by Sea Shepherd.

The two Sea Shepherd votes are literally pirate vessels, having been struck off the shipping register of the countries under whose flags they were sailing. The government of Belize deregistered the Farley Mowat last month, and the British authorities are in the process of striking off the Robert Hunter.

Under the law of the sea, unflagged vessels can be boarded and seized and their crews arrested.

The Times…

Japanese scientists have reacted angrily to media reports that surplus whale meat is being sold as pet food.

A UK conservation group said last week that Japan’s research programme was landing so many whales, unwanted meat was being turned into dog food.

But the Institute of Cetacean Research (ICR) in Tokyo said less than 100kg of a species not covered by a global ban was sold to a pet food manufacturer.

The ICR said Japan does not have a glut of whale meat.

More news on whaling. Everyday there seems to be new push to turn back time as Japan and Noway and Iceland try to get whaling brought back from the pretence of ’scientific’ whaling.

Japan launches its most serious challenge yet to the two-decade ban on whale-hunting when it hosts a conference tomorrow aimed at “reforming” the International Whaling Commission.

The three-day meeting in Tokyo could help seal the fate of the world’s whaling regulatory body, which pro-whalers say has been “hijacked” by environmentalists. The conference mission statement - headed “Normalising the IWC” - says the commission has “lost its purpose” as a body responsible for the “conservation and management” of whales.

“It is difficult to see how the IWC can continue,” said Yasukazu Hamada, a leading member of Japan’s Parliamentary Whaling League. “Frustration here is very high. This really is its last chance.”

The initiative comes at a critical time for the IWC. The commission is bitterly divided following a majority vote last year in favour of the now infamous “St Kitts declaration“, which argued that whales must be culled to save dwindling fish stocks.

Conservationists believe that Japan is trying to build on the momentum of that victory by building an alternative power bloc. “This could be a first step toward building a rival organisation to the IWC,” said Junichi Sato, Greenpeace Japan’s whaling spokesman.

Pro-whaling nations led by Japan, Norway and Iceland claim the 1986 moratorium is no longer needed because whale stocks are recovering, and want the IWC to shift from protecting whales to “managed, sustainable” whaling.

The Japan Fisheries Agency has invited delegates who are concerned at “the current inability of the IWC to manage whale resources”. But the Tokyo conference has already run into trouble before it even starts.

Only a handful of the IWC’s 72 member countries have said they will send delegates and 22 nations, including the UK, New Zealand and Australia, are boycotting the meeting.

The US also appears to have pulled out and Denmark, which plans to attend, has been bombarded with protests from around the world, urging it to reconsider. Of those mainly African, Caribbean and Pacific countries that will attend, many are recipients of Japan’s “fisheries grant aid”, a form of overseas development aid that conservationists say is used as a bribe. Some estimates suggest that Japan has spent three-quarters of a billion dollars in fisheries grant aid since the mid-1990s in an attempt to swing the IWC back to a pro-whaling stance.

The conference opens as Japanese ships in the southern oceans hunt a quota of more than 1,000 minke, Bryde’s, sei, sperm and fin whales in their largest “scientific whaling” expedition so far. The fleet is being trailed by environmentalists from Greenpeace and Sea Shepherd, whose members clashed with whalers in Antarctic waters last week.

Japan’s fleet plans to kill 50 humpbacks - a red-list endangered species - this year, a move likely to provoke controversy at the next IWC conference in Anchorage, Alaska, in May.

Japan has long threatened to pull out of the IWC, but its bluff may finally be called this year if the Tokyo conference fails and conservationists regain their majority in Alaska.