UK Fish Dependence: The increasing reliance of the UK on fish from elsewhere

Wrecking the Ocean

The depletion of our fish, which we have relied on for centuries, and their replacement with imports and distant water fishing, has been happening silently but systematically, from the depths of the sea to the supermarket shelves we see every day. Few of us think about what this really means, or even that it is happening. But, in fact, the story of our oceans, and how we are wrecking the brightness of our future, has all the ingredients of an epic; one of an incredible evolutionary abundance trying to survive in the face of centuries of human overexploitation.

In the EU 72% of fish stocks are in an overfished state, with most of the rest ‘fully exploited’. Yet consumers are demanding more and more fish. The consequence is an increasing dependence on fish imports.

Increasing Fish Dependence

One way to monitor this change is through mapping where our fish comes from, our ‘fish dependence’. We have reframed this as equivalent to how many days the fish on our plates comes from EU water and for how many it comes from someone else’s water. What we find are dates creeping earlier and earlier in the year, meaning that we are less able to provide for our own consumption, and more dependent on someone else. As you can see below, the UK is fish dependent on 4^th August- just over half way through the year, and two weeks earlier than in 2000.

UK can lead the EU in sustainable fishing

The UK has actually been placed in a relatively better position than it’s European neighbours. While the majority of UK stocks continue to be overexploited, some have made a recovery.

This is not enough. A radical change is desperately needed in order to get our fish stocks back in shape and reconcile consumption with available resource. The reform of the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) is an opportunity we can ill afford to miss. Some of our demands are to:

• Reduce fishing fleet capacity to reconcile it with available resources; improving data collection, transparency and reporting; and prioritising scientific advice in determining catch quotas.
• Create a context in which being profitable is aligned with doing the right thing, by making access to resources conditional on social and environmental criteria.
• Promote responsible consumption among all EU consumers.
• Use public funds to deliver social and environmental goods by investing in environmentally constructive measures, research, and stakeholder involvement, as well as enforcing sustainable quotas and practices both in the EU and imports from non-EU sources.

In order for this to happen, policymakers need to look beyond the short-term costs that could result from reform and give priority to the long-term benefits that healthy marine resources will provide.