The European Commission (EC) has launched a campaign to slow down the exhaustion of industrial fishing in European waters and promote a more sustainable model.
The "Fish Fight" campaign was initially launched in October 2010 in the United Kingdom, and has just been introduced in other four countries: Spain, France, Poland and Germany.
"Fish Fight has a great power and I am grateful to the people who support it and understand that we cannot go on with business as usual. This is not an option anymore, for the simple reason that fish stocks are decreasing; we need a real change: to fish less and earn more," said Commissioner of Fisheries of the European Union (EU), Maria Damanaki.
"We can do that through a better management of our fish stocks and for instance avoiding discards. I hope that Fish Fight public support will help to bring the radical change that we need," she added.
According to Fish Fight, the quota system is not the most appropriate method, "because in a mixed fishery where different kinds of fish appear, fishermen cannot control what species they are catching." This involves the incidental catch of unwanted species that fishermen are forced to return into the sea because they are not allowed to unload them.
FIS (www.fis.com)