Now it's time to act - demand a healthy sea environment from the EU-parliament!

Now, in 2012, the EU regulates the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP). Almost every week there are some meetings or hearings at the parliament around this topic.

EU CFP is only renewed every 10th year. That's why we need to act fast, our window for change is closing. The EU says that 72% of the assessed fish stocks are overfished and 20% are now beyond biologicaly safe limits (which means the stocks may not survive even if we were to stop fishing them now). The EU imports around 50% of the fish we consume yet at the same time we dump about the same amount of fish over board dead, wasted. This collosal waste is in part due to the unfair way fishing quotas are handed out. In short, it entitles a fisherman to only bring a certain amount of a species back to port, all the other fish caught in the net are then dumped at sea. The reason these fish are dumped is because harsh fines are imposed on the fisherman for cathcing the wrong type of fish.There are many fisherfolk and politicians that actively work for a better fisheries policy, but there are those who do not. This latter group is mainly composed of the public, companies and also politicians who have still not understood the seriousness of what is happening. Like written in an earlier article, one trawler and only one, can fish as many tens of thousands of fish as equivelant boats some hundred years ago.

Some people from member organizations of YEE recently created a group working for raising awareness among public, and it's now time to join the organizations and countries working towards sustainable seas in Europe. Some work with lobbying in the EU-parliament. Few are working with a public focus. But with good focus on both EU-parliamentarians and making discussions out in public, together organizations and YEE's member organizations can affect the 751 parliamentarians, the parliamentarians that should be our voice, the people's voice!

YEE became a part of big coalition of more than 150 organizations from all over Europe called OCEAN2012 that are trying to make the new CFP-reform beneficial. This organization can help us with good dates for actions, good subjects to work with that other organizations already have - everything to have a strong good chance to change.

The YEE working group is thinking that a good plan is to prepare some actions, articles that could be sent to newspapers. Almost like giving a concept/tools that can be used or helping in figuring out what you or your organization can do. A big part of this is to help/give advices to people who haven't done things like this before. We will inform you on development of this case, ask you to disseminate some information, organize small actions in your local communities, we will give you tools and support if you will give us your energy and ideas.

If you have any ideas on actions or things/texts that could be used to be snapped up by media or want to be in the work with this, contact us! Or if you just want to be with the core group working on this issue. Send us an email, give us a call and you'll be in! Anybody can participate! The CFP-reform can be hard to understand in detail, but the content can easily be understood - it was created 30 years ago to stop overfishing, but today the failure is still echoing.

We have a good chance to change this!

With Ocean2012, we can change this!

Contact us: Patrick Scott Rossi This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Read more at: www.ocean2012.eu