EU Cod Worries

The European Union announced Friday that fishermen must reduce their capture of cod and other threatened fish species by up to 25 percent to protect fish stocks in European waters. Today, cod populations in the North Sea, the eastern British Channel, and the Skagerrak strait have dwindled to 50,000 tons, down from 250,000 tons in the 1970s. According to environmentalists, fishing quotas were too high to maintain a healthy population of cod, and insubstantial fines did not effectively deter illegal fishing. Last month, the EU failed to protect blue-fin tuna from over fishing.