Ourfish

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  • Scientist videos: Ending Overfishing is Climate Action

    Scientist videos: Ending Overfishing is Climate Action

    More than 300 scientists have signed a statement calling for action by the European Commission, European Parliament and EU member states to end overfishing “as an urgent and necessary response to biodiversity and climate crises”. The scientists are urging the EU to set fishing limits within scientific advice, and recognise that “ecosystem-based fisheries management is critical to the health of the ocean and its capacity to respond to climate change”

    Read press release: Scientists Launch Call to EU: Ending Overfishing Is Climate Action

    If you are a scientist and would like to sign onto the statement, please submit your details on the statement page here.

    Professor Didier Gascuel, head of the Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences Center, Agrocampus Ouest, Institut Agro, France: Ensuring Sustainability for Fisheries is Climate Action

     

    Erica M. Ferrer, NSF Graduate Research Fellow, San Diego Fellow, Aburto Lab, Scripps Institution of Oceanography: Climate Change is Made Worse by Overfishing

     

    Alex Rogers, Science Director, Rev Ocean: Overfishing and bycatch are largest drivers of biodiversity loss in the ocean

     

    Farah Obaidullah, Director, Women4Oceans: Ending overfishing would reduce the pressure on the ocean

     

    Rainer Froese: Overfishing means taking more fish than can grow back… that’s pretty stupid

     

    Hans Otto Pörter, Professor and Section Head, Alfred-Wegener-Institut: We need to reduce fishing pressure and overfishing

    If you are a scientist and would like to sign onto the statement, please submit your details on the statement page here.

    For more information, see www.our.fish/science

  • Video: Ocean Avengers Meet European Commissioner for Environment, Oceans and Fisheries Virginijus Sinkevičius

    Video: Ocean Avengers Meet European Commissioner for Environment, Oceans and Fisheries Virginijus Sinkevičius

    As EU Fisheries Ministers gather today in Brussels to set fishing levels for the North East Atlantic for 2020, 13-year-old Farrah Delrue and 10-year-old Josephine Seton – representing current and future generations – presented European Commissioner for Environment, Oceans and Fisheries Virginijus Sinkevičius with more than half a million signatures from EU citizens who are calling for an end to overfishing by EU member states. EU Member states are required to end overfishing by 2020, under the Common Fisheries Policy. Go here to learn more: http://www.climateocean.com

  • Video: Ocean Avengers Message to EU Leaders – Ending Overfishing IS Climate Action!

    Video: Ocean Avengers Message to EU Leaders – Ending Overfishing IS Climate Action!

    Responding to an urgent appeal from EU Citizens, five Ocean Avengers – lead by Poseidon, God of the Sea, swooped on Brussels to deliver an urgent ultimatum to heads of state attending an EU Council meeting: “Take emergency climate action now! Instruct your fisheries ministers to end overfishing at the EU AGRIFISH Council Meeting”

    Take action!

    Press release: Ocean Avengers Deliver Ultimatum to EU Prime Ministers: End Overfishing

  • Taking COP25 – the Blue Cop – to Bergen

    Taking COP25 – the Blue Cop – to Bergen

    Delegates arriving for this morning’s session of the EU-Norway Fisheries consultation were met by a troupe of flamboyant flamenco dancers to highlight the link between the UN climate change negotiations in Madrid and the need for the EU and Norway to deliver on their ambitions for climate action by ending overfishing of shared fish populations, which would increase the ocean’s capacity to mitigate climate change.

    Learn more: Fisheries Officials Feel Heat as Flamenco Brings COP25 to EU-Norway Meeting

  • Video: State of the Stocks

    Video: State of the Stocks

    Our European seas and coastal fishermen using low impact fishing gear are paying the unfair price for decades of overfishing and political prioritisation of short term financial interests of destructive fisheries and overfishing.

    Watch our brand new mini documentary from the Danish fishing cooperative Thorupstrand. These fishermen using Danish Seines and nets are supportive of fishing limits that support healthy stocks and oceans.

    Will European fisheries ministers finally listen to the small scale fishermen and the need for keeping our ocean healthy when setting this year’s fishing limits in the North-East Atlantic this December?

  • Missed our Webinar “Ending Overfishing Is Opportunity to Combat Climate Crisis “? Catch up with this video

    Missed our Webinar “Ending Overfishing Is Opportunity to Combat Climate Crisis “? Catch up with this video

    Missed our webinar Climate action and overfishing, with Dr Rashid Sumaila on September 2nd? Catch up here!

    Working Paper: Ending Overfishing Can Mitigate Impacts of Climate Change

    Press release: Ending Overfishing Is Opportunity to Combat Climate Crisis – Report

    Powerpoint from webinar: Ending overfishing can mitigate impacts of climate change

     

    Ending overfishing would not only secure vital fish populations for the future, but constitutes a significant climate emergency action, according to a report published today. According to Our Fish, the report’s findings offer EU governments a realistic opportunity to deliver immediate and effective action on dangerous climate change, as well as meeting their legal obligations to finally quit overfishing.

    The working paper, Ending Overfishing Can Mitigate Impacts of Climate Change, by Dr Rashid Sumaila and Dr Travis Tai of the University of British Columbia, finds that “overfishing and climate change are not mutually exclusive problems to be addressed separately,” as both are severely impacting ocean health, and putting marine ecosystems and the goods and services they provide to communities at risk. Ending overfishing would give the ocean respite from human pressure, making it more resilient to the effects of the climate crisis, while helping to restore critically valuable marine ecosystems, says the paper

  • Video #EndOverfishing Don’t Greenwash It

    Video #EndOverfishing Don’t Greenwash It

    By 2020 EU Fisheries Ministers must ensure that all fishing in #EU waters becomes sustainable. With less than one year to go to the deadline, is the EU on track? The European Commission seems to think so, but scientists say otherwise.

    Take Action now.

  • Are the EU and Norway overfishing in the public interest?

    Are the EU and Norway overfishing in the public interest?

    Our Fish Demands end to EU overfishing in Bergen

    Every year the EU and Norway meet to discuss how much fish they can catch in each others waters. There is sound scientific advice about how much this should be, yet every year the two parties decide to ignore the scientists, by fishing more than is advised. This is overfishing. Carrying on like this makes it difficult for the EU to reach its own target of ending overfishing by 2020 especially give the “shared stocks”, account for a lot of fish. For some EU member states like Germany and Netherlands, the shared stocks  account for some of their most important fish stocks.

    Our Fish is committed to supporting the EU in in meeting its promise to end overfishing. So, in 2018, we realised we needed to pay close attention to  these Norway discussions (the EU & Norway are adamant they are not negotiations). Consultations start during the year, and end in a meeting, typically held in Bergen on the Norwegian coast for a week in November (cold & expensive). So how should we participate; could we join those consultations or just walk into the meeting room?

    We asked the European Commission could we join their delegation (like some fishers do). “Ask a member state”, they said. So we did (three of them). They replied that the EU delegation is represented by the  European Commission one; so we asked the Commission again, and around and around it went. In the end we were not invited join the European delegation (unlike the fishers, who were), but we went to Bergen anyway to create some considerable noise.

    We’re not letting it rest there though. We wrote to the European Commission under Freedom of Information rules, to ask for the correspondence between them about our request. And here is the Commission’s response. Basically they said, the information included, “personal data”. And personal data can only be shared for a specific purpose in the public interest.

    So what do you think? How should we respond? We, you – all of us, we are the European public. Is it not in our interests to know why civil society is denied access to deliberations which result in the over-exploitation of a publicly owned resource i.e. overfishing of fish stocks? Contact us, and let us know your thoughts and ideas, via email, or reply to us on this Twitter post or here on Facebook.

    Rebecca Hubbard is Program Director of Our Fish

  • Video: Staying Up All Night To Get Fish (Quota)

    Video: Staying Up All Night To Get Fish (Quota)

    Each December, fisheries ministers from all over the EU get together in Brussels to haggle over annual fishing limits for the Atlantic and North Sea. They arrive at the meeting, armed with the best possible scientific advice from, well, scientists. But when the doors are closed, the party begins and the scientific advice is forgotten. Instead, ministers bow to pressure from industry interests to maintain unsustainably high fishing quotas – and that results in more overfishing. Yes, each year, our fisheries ministers actually agree to take more fish from the sea than scientists say is sustainable.

    This craziness doesn’t have to continue. Let EU Commissioner Vella and EU fisheries ministers know that you want them to end overfishing! 

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