Neely

http://www.fishfight.net/
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Being an ardent follower of the top fellow Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, I have already and immediately, signed up to his Fish Fight Campaign and Neely is hoping you'll do the same.

So what is the Fish Fight?

No, it is not a reference to the old Monty Python sketch, where two silly chaps whack each other with large fish until one falls into a canal! What it is is a protest against the EU quota system which is causing an untold amount of senseless waste.

I'm not a fishy expert, but basically, when those fishermen in big yellow hats and beards go out a fishing they have a limit which they are allowed to catch and when they reach that limit they have to throw away all the rest. This means that perfectly good fish are being thrown away dead when they could end up on someone's plate or be left swimming in the sea. Crazy or what?

So what does this mean and what does Hugh hope to achieve?

Well, Hugh does not want to shape EU policy, he wants to get the relevant people around the table and sort the issue as best as possible and for that he needs public support. Here is a link and a partial cutting from Hugh's own blog:
http://www.rivercottage.net/users/Hu...my-fish-fight/

Some of these discards are undersized fish, and some of them are species for which there is currently little market.

But much of it is “over-quota” fish: prime cod, haddock, coley, whiting, plaice, and other major food species, for which the fishermen have run out of quota.

But in the pursuit of other fish for which they do still have quota, they cannot avoid catching large numbers of the “wrong” species. It’s an inherent problem in what is known as a “mixed fishery”.

The fish are being thrown away because to land them would be illegal. Only a tiny proportion of these fish will survive.

For obvious reasons, fishermen hate discards. Conservationists hate them too.

Even politicians don’t like them. But they are an unavoidable consequence of the current Common Fisheries Policy and the quota system.

The very same rules that have been devised with the aim of protecting stocks (principally quotas and minimum landing sizes) have become the reason that so much fish is being thrown back into the sea.

The CFP is under review and due to be reformed in the coming months. The fishfight campaign aims to influence this reform.

We do not seek to dictate policy, merely the consequences of policy. By signing up to our campaign you will be writing directly to the policy makers in Europe.

And you will help to ensure that a reformed CFP has the elimination of discards as a primary objective. Thank you so much for your support. Please spread the word!

Sign up here: http://www.fishfight.net

Hugh

So what does signing up involve, loads of hassle I expect?

Nope. The link will lead you to a one minute video and below you will be asked to simply fill in your name, email address and country of origin and that's that. If you don't want to receive other info from River Cottage then you can untick the box if you want.

So go on sign up and tell your mates!

Thank you and Kind Regards,

Neely.