1 comment.European Fish Fight Campaign to be launched on Tuesday
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Tomorrow, Tuesday 31 May, Commissioner Maria Damanaki will take part in the launching event of the European Fish Fight Campaign in Brussels.
The Fish Fight campaign was launched in the United Kingdom in October 2010 by the chef, journalist and food writer Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, to raise awareness about the issue of sustainable fishing and how to end discarding of fish. So far the campaign has been supported by more than 675.000 people and recently won a BAFTA award in the feature category.
The campaign’s main website, www.fishfight.net will be joined by 11 more microsites in 11 different languages. They are www.fishfight.pl (Polish) , www.fishfight.se (Swedish) , www.fishfight.de (German), www.fishfight.dk (Danish), www.fishfightfr.com (French), www.fishfight.gr (Greek) , www.fishfight.es (Spanish) , www.fishfight.it (Italian), www.fishfight.nl (Dutch), www.fishfight.be (Flemish) and www.fishfight.pt (Portugese).
Much larger campaign launches will take place later in the year in 4 specific target countries. These campaigns will be launched by local fish fighting celebrities in Germany, France, Spain and Poland.
Commissioner Damanaki said: “Fish Fight has a great power and I am grateful to the people who support it and understand that we can not go with business as usual. This is not an option anymore, for the simple reason that fish stocks are decreasing; we need a real change: to fish less and earn more and we can do that through a better management of our fish stocks and for instance avoiding discards. I hope that Fish Fight public support will help to bring the radical change that we need.”
The European Commission is currently finalising its proposals for a thorough reform of the EU’s Common Fisheries Policy and the issue of discarding is a key element in the coming reform. The Commissioner expects to present her proposals for the new policy in July.
It is about time somebody done something about fishing specially in Malta and Gozo because I seen people catching fish about the size of about 2 inches and when you talk to these people, they say that’s all there is and there is no big fish around. when I said to these people ofcourse there is no big fish is because you caught the small fish so there is no big fish.