#FishFreeFebruary

HELP PROTECT OUR OCEANS!

There are no longer plenty more fish in the sea. #FishFreeFebruary challenges you to help protect our oceans by removing seafood from your diet for 28 days to help to raise awareness of the issues caused by intensive fishing practices. Not all fishing is bad, but did you know that whilst small-scale fishing can be sustainable, the vast majority of the seafood we consume comes from industrial fisheries with multiple conservation challenges?

Calculations from the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation estimate that 90% of global fish stocks are being fished to their maximum or over-fished - and catching fish at a faster rate than they can reproduce and re-populate means that fish stocks are collapsing. Dynamite, long lines, trawlers, gill nets, drift nets, super trawlers, electric pulse nets and fish farms are catching alarming quantities and decimating wild stocks worldwide. #FishFreeFebruary aims to raise awareness of the immense global threat that eating seafood has on our oceans with a website full of resources and information. Some of the topics include:-

* Bycatch - for example Longline tuna fishing, which also catches and kills unimaginable numbers of sharks, dolphins and seabirds and trawl nets which destroy entire ecosystems and reduce the ocean floor to rubble.

* Ghost nets - known as the ocean's silent killers, these are discarded, torn or lost fishing gear that entangle millions of sharks, rays, fish, dolphins, whales, seabirds and turtles, and which live on after the fishermen have returned to port.

* Aquaculture - fish farms are susceptible to diseases and sea lice which can then spread to and decimate wild populations. The largely nitrogren based faeces and unused fish food, together with the chemicals used to promote fish growth can cause oxygen depletion in the surroundings waters, where no other fish can live.

You can find out more and show your support by taking part in #FishFreeFebruary. Read more Here.