Chefs and Greenpeace bid to save threatened fish

Jeremy Lovell, Reuters 28 Jan 08;

LONDON (Reuters) - Leading British chefs will join forces with Greenpeace on Wednesday in a campaign to push restaurants to serve up only species of fish that have not been overexploited.

Experts say that some three-quarters of the world's fish stocks has been pushed to the brink due to overfishing and, with it, widespread corruption.

"Protecting the diversity of fish in our seas is at least as important as looking after our plants and land-animals," said leading chef Raymond Blanc, who is backing the information campaign to discourage the use of threatened fish.

"Those of us who are passionate about cooking and serving seafood will be equally passionate about using only sustainable species, as the fish we cook and eat now will determine what we are able to use and consume in the future," he added.

It is not the exotic fish species that the campaign, being launched at London's Old Billingsgate Fish Market on Wednesday evening, is setting out to protect but the formerly common ones such as cod, halibut and tuna by spreading awareness amongst chefs and food writers.

The pressures of demand on these species, as well as environmental damage, has forced many of them into decline.

CRISIS LEVELS

Environment group WWF has been warning for some time that demand for Mediterranean blue fin tuna has pushed stocks down to crisis levels.

"No one wants to see some of our fishy favorites disappear from dinner plates. But, unless we only use seafood that has been caught in a sustainable manner, then this is a situation we could see very soon," said Sarah Shoraka from Greenpeace.

The Worldwatch Institute, a U.S.-based environmental watchdog, estimated in its 2008 State of the World report that increasing wealth in Asia had sharply boosted demand for seafood, adding to the pressure on dwindling stocks.

It noted that fish consumption in China had increased demand 10-fold since 1961 and that fish now supplied 30 percent of demand for protein in Asia against six percent globally.

Conservationists have also warned that booming demand coupled with increasing regulation had led to a rise in corruption around fisheries, ranging from mislabeling landed fish to secretly landing excess catches to simple bribery.

IUCN, the World Conservation Union, is convening a meeting in Washington this week to discuss the extent of corruption in fisheries worldwide.

(Reporting by Jeremy Lovell)