Every once in a while in my meanderings through the web, I come across something that really hits the spot - like this amazing animation from Phil Reynolds, for example. Phil's taken an idea from Charles Clover's book about overfishing, The End of the Line, and he uses it beautifully to illustrate the problem of 'bycatch' - the non-commercial species which are also killed during the process of bringing our favourite fish species to the table.
In the book Clover points out that one of the reasons (probably the main reason, in fact) that we tolerate the strip-mining of our seas using rapacious industrial trawling method is that we don't know it's happening. If trawling happened on land, he says - if the British countryside was constantly being trawled for pigs, for example, and any other species which were caught and killed in the nets were just tossed back out again to rot in the fields - there would be a national outcry, and the barbarous practice would be outlawed at once.
But because it happens out of sight under water, we tolerate the wanton waste and destruction of species and habitats.
Not for too much longer though, if we have any sense left. We already have enough fishing capacity currently in the world to land the entire global catch four times over. Unless we end destructive practices like bottom-trawling immediately, and urgently establish large-scale marine reserves to preserve remaining stocks, a hideous future like that portrayed in Phil's remarkable animation (if you substitute tuna and cod for the horses and pigs, of course) is only too likely to come true.
What you can do
