Europe Takes Africa’s Fish, and Boatloads of Migrants Follow

Huge industrial trawlers, most from Europe, push through waters off the African coast, efficiently scraping sea beds clean of fish. Such nonselective industrial fishing has devastated fish populations and habitat, destroying a livelihood and encouraging more African fishermen to use their boats to assist fellow Africans in fleeing their homelands for work in Europe. Governments throughout Africa do little to discourage the trawling, writes Sharon LaFraniere for the New York Times, with European Union officials contending that Africans oversell fishing rights, offer misleading catch data and allow fishing in sensitive breeding areas. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that 75 percent of world fish stocks are overfished or fished to maximum; such current fishing patterns are unsustainable for a rising human population that increasingly demands protein. One scientific consultant noted, “The seas are being emptied.” – YaleGlobal