14 May 2004 12:11
Cod has had its chips
COD stocks may be wiped out within 15 years because of overfishing and oil exploration, the World Wide Fund for
Nature warned yesterday. The largest remaining stocks, in the Barents Sea north of Norway and Russia, are under
particular threat, while catches of North Sea cod are only a quarter of those in the early Eighties.
The Barents Sea accounts for half the global catch but quotas are unsustainably high and 100,000 tons are being
fished illegally there every year, the WWF said. "The onus is on Russia and Norway to prevent cod suffering a
similar fate to the Canadian stock which collapsed in the Nineties, " it added.
[The Express] |
RUSSIA IN FACTS
