Fishy business
Anouk Ride reveals the deception that keeps supermarket shelves full of seafood while rivers and seas are being fished out.

Bite back! -
your guide to eating fish

Life's not easy as a
Patagonian Toothfish.
or a Shortnose Sucker or a Giant Clam. These, and others, explain how human domination of the world's seas and rivers is selling them short.

The big picture
Fisher and environmental activist Bernard Martin warns of the high cost of overfishing.

FISHING: The Facts

Tree-hugging fishers
Meenakshi Raman describes exactly what it was that drove Malaysian fishers to demonstrate their love for trees.

The Great Tunafish Sandwich Hunt
Piracy, trade wars and international protest could not stand in the way of the US desire for tuna.

The shark's children
Breaking the bond between humans and sea creatures unleashes chaos, reports Vicki Kalgovas from the Solomon Islands.

Behind the label
Is eco-labelling the way forward? Indian campaigner and academic John Kurien has other ideas.

Dead in the water
Reefs are being poisoned while tropical-fish traders make millions. Anouk Ride reports on strange practices involving cyanide.

Action

Fishers are not a talkative bunch. At my local beach they stand for hours on end saying nothing. Fishing has been called 'the quiet sport'. Silent, more like!

This reserve may be one reason why the plight of fishers and fish is relatively unreported. Even the most erratic of newspaper readers will have an idea that the rainforest is disappearing. But few know, for example, that the list of animal species extinct since 1600 has many fish and 6 pages - 297 species - of extinct molluscs. Many more than mammals (one-and-a-half pages) or any other category of animal. Concern is highly selective, as US-based art critic and angler Robert Hughes points out: 'When the mad blonde played by Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction boiled a pet rabbit, the audience was horrified. Few people feel a similar revulsion when a lobster or a mud crab is boiled alive. They just reach for the mayonnaise and dig right in.'

But when jobs and fish stocks start disappearing, fishers break their silence. This magazine is full of fishers and environmentalists who are denouncing the irresponsible use of fish. Fish are smelly and definitely not cuddly. But these activists hope that you too will think they are worth saving.

Anouk Ride
for the New Internationalist
Co-operative
anouk@newint.com.au