HOPES that short-term cuts in fishing will quickly replenish Europe’s fish stocks are likely to be dashed – because overfishing goes back to the Victorians.
This week, ministers trying to reform the European Union’s Common Fisheries Policy will hear that 88 per cent of Europe’s stocks are overfished, but more than half of these could recover to 1970s levels if fishing lets up for a few years. Yet this assumes that stocks were healthy 40 years ago.
That may be wrong. A team led by Ruth Thurston at the University of York, UK, calculated the amount of fish, such as cod,…
