Product Description

We have reached a pivotal moment for fishing, with seventy-five percent of the world's fish stocks either fully exploited or overfished. If nothing is done to stop the squandering of fish stocks the life of the oceans will face collapse and millions of people could starve. Fish is the aspirational food for Western society, the healthy, weight-conscious choice, but those who eat and celebrate fish often ignore the fact that the fishing industry, although as technologically advanced as space travel, has an attitude to conservation 10,000 years out of date. Trawling on an industrial scale in the North Sea takes 16 lbs of dead marine animals to produce just 1lb of sole. Regulation isn't working, fishermen must cheat or lose money, dolphins and other wildlife (seabirds, turtles, sharks) are killed unnecessarily and fish stocks are collapsing despite the warnings. The End of the Line looks at the problem and proves that we, as consumers, have to change if the situation is to improve.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #22447 in Books
• Published on: 2005-03-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Review
'Hugely important book', BBC Wildlife .'"entertaining, outrageous and a must-read for anyone who cares about the sea and its denizens"', Times Higher Educational Supplement .'A blazingly powerful indictment', The Sunday Telegraph .'Anyone with the slightest interest in where our fish comes from, and the devastating effects of our voracious appetite for it, should read this', Tom Parker-Bowles, Mail on Sunday .'It is a rare book that changes one's life, even in a small way...Charles Clover has written a shocking book about the effects of industrial fishing', Andrew Marr, Start the Week, Radio 4 .'Devastating - a succinct and powerful crash course on the pressing environmental issues surrounding fish that should send consumer awareness soaring', Daily Mail .'This is an issue which needs populist exposure. Clover has done it admirably - a brilliant exposition', Owen Paterson MP, The Spectator

Christopher Hirst, The Independent, 25 February 2005
Persuasive and desperately disturbing, this book is the marine equivalent of Silent Spring.

Andrew Marr, The Daily Telegraph, 21 July 2004
It is a rare book that changes one's life, even in a small way.

Customer Reviews

A look at the real Captain Birds Eye
I first heard about this book on BBC Radio 4's 'Start The Week' where Andrew Marr described it as one of the few recent books that had left him feeling furious. Marr was spot on. This book sets out clearly the full ruthless horror that is industrial fishing and the irreversible damage it has been inflicting on the world's seas. How many of us know anything of modern fishing and still think of fishermen as quaint and harmless Captain Birds Eye? The seas and their increasingly desperate situation have gone largely unnoticed compared to land based farming and the state of our countryside. Hopefully this book will be a marine version of 'Silent Spring' and help bring about some form of solution. But as the book shows, solving this situation will be no easy task when faced with the comic nightmare that is the political, bureaucratic, commercial and scientific system trying to manage the seas and fishing. The book ends with a helpful guide to choosing which fish are okay to eat and those fish for which the situation is increasingly bleak and should therefore be avoided at all costs. The book is very accessible and written by the Daily Telegraph's environment editor. A must for anybody concerned with the state of our world's environment.

Interesting read with caution!
Working for a fisheries enforcement agency, I found myself agreeing with most of what Mr Clover has written and would heartedly recommend it to those with an interest in the marine environment. Sadly, the narrative does wander and looses focus near the end. There are a few errors that pedants could pick up (claiming that Greenland Halibut is also known as Turbot for example) but there were two big points I disagreed with the author on. Firstly, he is very negative on the use of Satellite Monitoring in Fisheries Control, which has really become an effective tool over the last few years - sadly, UK courts will often disregard this and the views of expert witnesses. Secondly, he touts the use of Blue Whiting as a replacement for Cod. With ICES now calling for a ban on Blue Whiting fishing to the ludicrously high weights of fish caught (Norway alone have an individual quota of 1 million tons which is the total quota ICES have recommended!) This is another fishery we could well leave alone.

Outstanding, moving book! Incredible eye-opener!
The title does not look firstly as tantalizing as what all these pages really contain. You should really take a look inside and you will very probably realize how good this book is.
The End Of Line is definitely one of the best non-fiction books I have bought in the last couple of years. Here you can read what is really happening in the oceans worldwide. People often do not care much for what they don't see, but the consequences of what they (we) are letting happen to the fish resources are terrible.
Mr. Clover explains in a very professional and passionate way the crimes (the word is not an exageration) commited by such countries as Spain and the rest of the European Union, by Japan and many others, in their pursuit of profit: depleting the fish resources of many poor countries, bribing and coercing the government of those countries to let them do what they want with the fish, hiding reports to the public opinion. What the EU is doing about controls is really a bad joke.
We consumers need to wake up. Yes, eating fish is good for your health. Now, if no radical change takes place in the way we are destroying the oceans' biological resources, we are going to be in real trouble in the future and the next generations more so.
This all sounds pretty dramatic and it really is.
Thanks, Mr. Clover