http://whichfish.org/

Just so you know what to eat if you're a fan of sea food.

lol, saw that on Linux's google+ this afternoon. I guess it's going 'round Twitter, which is probably "a good thing".

I've refused to eat cod for a long time now. There's a few fish not listed on there; for example Merlangius merlangus which I've eaten since a child by the name of whiting. I've not seen it in the shops, but it's pretty common off the Cornish coast and probably elsewhere. It tastes a lot like cod. I suspect you find it in fish fingers which list simply "white fish".

I'm very happy that Mackerel is "OK" because it's my all-time favourite fish. It's also the only one I've ever actually been fishing for, and the only one I've eaten within 30 minutes of being caught.

I've never eaten Cod as my grandad always said it was a wormy fish. I normally have Haddock.
I've had Whiting quick a bit offshore though. It's nice.

I absolutely love haddock, but whenever you go to a fish and chip shop, they never have any cooked. I will have to stop having cod though, I always feel bad about it.

Someone really needs to sort this fishing business out.

Agreed. I do not mind fishing being restricted for a while if it helps fish stocks to recover. I have some smoked haddock which I am having in thai curries right now, Very nice.

I've never developed a taste for seafood. I don't mind seaweed though.
Makes it rather easy to sit there smugly while you watch Hugh Fearnley-whatnot. However, as I live near one of the big fishing ports in the UK, and see what the trawlers do to the sea bed, it's impossible to ignore that we need to change things.

The solution is dead easy - ban nets.

Simples

Also remove fishing quotas from countries that have no fishing industry and the trading of quotas.

I think if you did that you'd find they very quickly did have a fishing industry, that looked amazingly like the fishing industry that used to exist in the places that do have quotas. Ships, unlike factories, aren't that hard to move and reregister.

Jon

Though how on earth can Luxenbourg have a quota, without a coastline?

Yes but that is why many Spanish boats are registered in the UK for their quota rights.

Which is why setting quota rights on a national level is stoopid, because boats simply gravitate to nations with the largest quotas, regardless of their 'port of origin'. In fact the whole CAP and fishing quota system is an exercise in institutional stupidity, but that's a bigger topic.

You can't limit the amount of fish caught by a quota system. First of all it doesn't work (as example) and second of all that doesn't limit the amount of fish caught, it just limits the amount of fish landed. You then get the lunatic state of boats hauling up tons of fish only to throw half of them back, dead, because they won't be saleable.

The only way to allow fish stocks to replenish is to simply disallow fishing entirely for a given period. Full stop. That's the only thing that works. They do it in other parts of the world, no problem, but the EU can't face the political and economic backlash so it doesn't happen here. So we get diminishing fish stocks still being caught that nobody really wants to/can buy and a system which encourages both national opportunism and vastly wasteful industrialised fishing. The sooner the fishing industries of europe realise you can't fish at the scale they are doing all year round, so some of the time you're going to have to find another job, the better it will actually be for everyone.

Jon

I agree we need to have a system like Iceland where there are fishing inspectors on every boat and a single inspector has the power to shut down an entire area for fishing for a period to help stocks. If that means the whole of the north sea is shut down for three years that is better than the permanent shutdown if they carry on overfishing.

Actually, the best solution is the sea equivalent of nature reserves. Not a given period; rather a given area. If enough of the ocean is given to sanctuary, then the problem can be eliminated very simply.

Eight down, thirteen to go.