• Sarah Burnside

29 October 2009The global fishing industry is unsustainable, writes Sarah Burnside in Eureka Street

AS PETER SINGER and Jim Mason noted in their 2006 book The Ethics of What We Eat, even conscientious omnivores can find it difficult to concern themselves with animals who occupy remote underwater places and are, on the whole, decidedly not cute.

In the Australian context, fishing and aquaculture are the nation's fifth most valuable rural industry. The website for the Department for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry notes cautiously: 'The challenge is to develop the industry while ensuring the sustainability of Australia's marine ecosystem.'

There is a growing awareness that the scale of the global fishing industry is unsustainable. Fishing is second only to climate change as the greatest environmental threat to marine ecosystems...

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