Is it really The End of the Line for fish?

What is this film?
A documentary called The End of the Line, released last week to coincide with the UN's first ever World Oceans Day. Based on a book by British journalist Charles Clover, it has already been compared to Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth and even Silent Spring, Rachel Carson's book about the pesticide DDT, which helped found the environmental movement in the 1960s. Clover's message is simple: the world's fish are being hunted to extinction; if things carry on as they are, seafood will disappear by 2048.

How bad is the situation?
Perilous. The global fish catch peaked in the late 1980s and has fallen ever since, even as trawlers get bigger, faster and more sophisticated. More than 70 per cent of world fish stocks are now fully exploited or in decline; the biomass of cod in the North Sea, says the Marine Conservation Society, has fallen from 250,000 tonnes in 1970 to just 37,000 tonnes in 2007; once common North Sea species like white skate are now critically endangered. And as nations with big fishing fleets exhaust their own waters, they start fishing off the coast of developing countries, so depriving some of the world's poorest people of traditional sources of protein.

Can we blame this state of affairs on global warming?
Pollution and climate change, which are reducing the amount of oxygen in the world's oceans, are certainly contributory factors, but far more lethal has been the impact of industrialised fishing. The global fishing industry, subsidised by governments to the tune of $14bn a year, has enough nets to take in the world's catch four times over. Some nets are miles long; the mouth of the largest is big enough to swallow 12 jumbo jets. And the ecological damage caused by bottom trawling is huge. Yet at root, all this destruction is fuelled by us, the consumers.

What have we been doing?
Eating five times as much fish, worldwide, as we did in 1950. In the UK, sales of fresh fish outstripped fresh poultry for the first time last year - and we're being urged to eat yet more. The Food Standards Agency, for instance, is still pushing its 'eat two [fish] a week' campaign. But despite the warnings of what this entails, no one seems bothered. The Michelin-starred Nobu restaurant, part-owned by Robert De Niro, still serves bluefin tuna, as Clover notes in his film - a fish in danger of extinction. Thanks to the film, Charlize Theron and other celebrities have written to chef Nobu Matsuhisa asking him to cut it from the menu so they can 'dine with a clear conscience'. Pret A Manger, conscience pricked, has withdrawn tuna fish baguettes from the high street. But Britain as a whole still contributes mightily to the problem.

How is Britain culpable?
As a member of the EU's Common Fisheries Policy (CFP), which has caused some of the worst over-fishing on Earth. Some 90 per cent of Europe's fish stocks are over-fished, compared with 25 per cent globally; 93 per cent of cod caught in the North Sea are killed before they can breed; 40 per cent to 60 per cent of fish caught a year are thrown over the side (in line with EU rules about dealing with fish that are over quota, too small or of the wrong sort).

Why is the CFP such a disaster?
Because the rules are made in a way that seems almost guaranteed to fail. Every year, ministers from around Europe meet and argue over how much fish can be caught. But under pressure to benefit their own fishing communities, they routinely trample over the recommendations of scientists. In 2007 biologists advised an annual catch of 15,000 tonnes of endangered bluefin tuna in the Mediterranean; ministers agreed a quota of 29,000 tonnes. In fact, studies have shown that the politicians systematically set quotas around 25 per cent higher than what scientists recommend.  

Do some countries manage things better?
Yes. Iceland has a functioning, sustainable industry thanks to its individual transferable quota (ITQ) system. Each boat is given a quota based on scientific advice and that quota can be traded with other boats. Small or unwanted fish are included in the quota and can't be thrown overboard, so there's an incentive to avoid catching them. New Zealand and Alaska have similar systems. If such strict quotas could be applied to 70 per cent of the world's oceans, say the experts, and fishing be banned in the remaining 30 per cent, there is still some hope of saving the world's fish.

And do fish populations sometimes 'bounce back'?
On occasion. Fish stocks trebled in the North Sea in WWI. A Europe-wide moratorium saved the herring in 1977. But in some seas, the point of extinction may have passed. The collapse of cod in the Newfoundland Grand Banks, waters that once ran thick with them, is an example. To arrest the decline, cod fishing has been banned there since 1992, but there has been no recovery. In response, consumers are switching from cod to pollack, but as Clover points out, this just moves the problem down the oceanic chain to the next species. The fish now sold in supermarkets are of quite different species than those sold 15 years ago. More than 50 per cent of fish bought in British supermarkets are now farmed, a percentage likely to grow ever higher as wild stocks disappear.   

So will there be anything left in the sea for us to eat?
Jellyfish. Scientists have found that, due to overfishing, the weight of jellyfish in the Benguela current off Namibia - once one of the world's most prolific fishing areas - now far exceeds that of its commercial fish stocks. Much the same has happened in the Black Sea, where plentiful fish stocks were over-fished and then overwhelmed by an Atlantic jellyfish species. Jellyfish compete for much the same food resources as the fish they displace, so preventing their recovery. Off the coast of Japan, vast armadas of slimy, six-foot Nomura jellyfish have been poisoning the native fish with their tentacles - local fish catches have fallen as much as 80 per cent as a result. But in one fishing town, enterprising locals now run cookery classes to teach people how to turn the jellyfish into sushi and other snacks. If we fail to conserve world fish stocks, jellyfishfingers could well be the food of the future. ·