12 January 2010
A short but important article on the NFFO website is having an impact in the United States.
The article was placed on the website last Thursday (7th January) and was spotted over the weekend by Dick Grachek, owner of the 80 foot groundfish stern trawler Anne Kathryn out of Point Judith, Rhode Island.
By Monday the article had been reproduced on several American fishing industry websites and was being widely discussed on the eastern seaboard of the United States.
Fishing: a valuable source of food with low environmental impact makes the important but generally unpublicised point that, viewed across a range of objective indicators, and compared to other types of food production, fish caught at sea has a relatively small ecological footprint. This is certainly not the view that has been prominent in the sensationalist media in recent years and the article reinserts a sense of proportion into the whole debate.
It is perhaps for this reason that the article has struck a chord on the other side of the Atlantic.
The reaction to this article demonstrates how it is possible to use the new information technology to redress the lazy assumptions of much of the mainstream media that the fishing industry is in terminal decline because all fish socks are crashing as a result of irresponsible and often illegal overfishing. There is no doubt that this media myth has great traction and has influenced both the European Commission and our own Government in recent years. The Federation’s article is perhaps the beginnings of an effective campaign to rebalance these distorted perceptions.