The Europeans were the primary cause of the collapse of the cod fishery. Spain and Portugal in particular.

I should amend that statement. The Trudeau government's refusal to enforce Canadian economic sovereignty against egregious violations by Spain and Portugal's aggressive over-fishing of Canadian stocks ... led to the collapse.

All it would have taken is a couple of frigates and a willingness to board (and seize) the offenders. Trudeau and his allies were so astoundingly anti-military they would not do even that much.

Interesting to see the Europeans popping up again in the tuna question.

Spain and Portugal were partly to blame. But not wholly. Canadian limits were also consistently set at levels above - often well above - scientists' advice. Scientists who persisted and went public with their warnings were dismissed.

The fisherman wanted higher catch limits, and politicians obliged by buying votes with that. There was also no system to encourage people to value a fishing license long term, or seek alternative work on their own terms. Iceland's system, for example, has always been far saner economically - and in conservation terms.

Now, of course, the Canadian cod industry is completely decimated, and lots of people are collecting UI. One more example of "political management" being right up there alongside "jumbo shrimp" et. al.

A classic example, unfortunately, of Garret Hardin’s masterpiece, The Tragedy of the Commons.

EU Referendum has written several articles about the disastrous EU fisheries management. From what I can make out it isn't going to improve anytime soon.

There is also another problem that rears its ugly head when talking about this problem, at least in relation to European waters.

The EU has chosen, in its infinite wisdom, to regulate fishing by setting quotas for tonnage of fish landed. (There are also regulations about mesh sizes of nets, but they are extremely poorly enforced.) This means that bycatch fish (those caught by accident while you are trying to catch another type) are thrown back into the sea - dead of course.

Also of course, the dead fish benefit nobody except possibly scavengers. The fishermen don't get to sell the fish, the customers on land don't get to buy and eat the fish and the fish don't get to live and breed.

Solution? Simple. Regulate by setting limits on days at sea. Too simple, that, though - not enough justification for hiring more bureaucrats. Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy at work - again.

Incidentally, the Spanish and Portuguese are the culprits in British waters as well.

I sat nest to a Federal Mariner on a plane flight a couple of years back. He commented on the drastic and noticable loss of sea life during his career at sea. It is not just the Cod and Tuna.

It amuses me when people dismiss 'environmental' concerns as somehow separate from their own personal welfare. The concept of environment is completely species-centric, and we might be well advised to use the fully qualified term 'human environment'; to bring home the relevance to those who don't quite get the connection. There were two separate government agencies in the system I once worked in, a 'Dept. of the Environment' and a 'Dept. of Health'. They may as well have been one for the degree of overlap between the issues that pertained. Polluted air and/or water, the overuse of fisheries, this crazy notion of global warming, ... surely the effects will be limited to those damn tree huggers.