19 Nov 2024

 Oceana UK has called for a legally binding deadline to end overfishing and a radically new approach to boost ocean health and coastal economies. In 2023 Oceana UK released a report showing half of the UK’s key fish populations were either overfished or critically low. Recent polling of the public revealed 82% of respondents were […]

03 Sep 2024

A new scientific assessment has reported steep declines in the UK’s seabird populations over the last 25 years. Five new species have joined the “red List”, which denotes the highest category of conservation concern and means a risk of local extinction: Leach’s storm-petrels, common gulls, great black-backed gulls, Arctic terns and great skuas. These join the […]

25 Aug 2024

A deep dive into stock assessments of fisheries around the world has revealed their sustainability is overstated – and it has implications for fisheries management and consumer awareness. Many fish stocks around the world are either threatened by overfishing or have already collapsed. One of the main reasons for this devastating trend is that policymakers […]

16 Jan 2024

The EU’s most senior court has stopped short of applying overfishing rules across all EU fish stocks in a case taken by Friends of the Irish Environment (FIE) and environmental lawyers Client Earth. The EU’s Court of Justice has ruled that EU ministers will be breaking the law if they approve overfishing of target stocks, but […]

08 Nov 2022

The mysterious Greenland shark – thought to have the longest lifespan of any vertebrate – has been granted new, historic protections by the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization (NAFO). The US and Canada, with support from the UK and the EU, proposed and secured a science-based ban on retaining the species from international waters.     […]

29 Mar 2022

ClientEarth is mounting legal action against the EU for failing to live up to its commitment to tackle overfishing. As the Guardian reported, the environmental organisation filed a request for the Council of the European Union on 25 March. It calls on the council to review the fishing limits of all 27 member countries set for December 2021 in the north-east […]

05 May 2020

Uncovering the EU member states most responsible for setting fishing quotas above scientific advice Griffin Carpenter New Economics Foundation Fisheries ministers are risking the sustainability of fish stocks by consistently setting fishing limits above scientific advice. This is our sixth and final year running a series of briefings to identify which Member States are standing […]