The sea is still deep, and fish may still be relatively cheap, but it costs much more than it used to. And it is far from plentiful.rnThis has become a commonplace. People have long been told that the North Sea is fished out and that the waters of the North Atlantic closest to Europe now produce only a fraction of the bounty of the 1940s. Books, articles and reports regularly record the decline. In 2004, for instance, a British royal commission described in bleak detail the collapse of north-east Atlantic cod, of North Sea hake and plaice, and of other species discarded as "bycatch" and thrown back deadrninto the sea in huge numbers.
展开▼
