Free Republic

Britain is pulling out of an agreement that permits fishermen from five other countries to operate in U.K. waters, the first step in reasserting control over its fishing industry as it prepares to leave the European Union. The government announced Sunday it will trigger the two-year process of leaving the London Fisheries Convention, which allows vessels from France, Belgium, Germany, Ireland and the Netherlands to fish between six and 12 nautical miles off the U.K. coastline. Britain signed the convention before it joined the EU and would be bound by its terms after leaving the bloc unless it starts to...

China is massively under-reporting its overseas fishing catch according to a study by Canada’s University of British Columbia. From 2000 to 2011, Beijing reported an average overseas catch of 368,000 tons a year to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization. According to the report, however, the average catch for 2000-11 was actually 4.6 million tons a year – more than 12 times the reported figure. Of that total, 2.9 million tons of fish a year came from West Africa. “The unreported catch is crippling the artisanal fisheries that help to feed West African populations. It shows the extent of the...