It’s time for Catholics to give up fish
Unless we stop over-fishing the oceans we will destroy earth's equilibrium, says Mark Dowd. We must act like responsible stewards again
20 February 2009

It was one of the great perks of being a primary school meals monitor: the prospect of getting "seconds". It was a good arrangement. You dined after the other pupils and therefore any surplus portions fell on to your plate (as long as Sammy Cox hadn't beaten you to it and charmed the dinner ladies into submission first).

And on Fridays at St Mark's Catholic school in Salford that meant one thing only - double helpings of Birds Eye fish fingers, or even better, steamed haddock in a creamed parsley sauce.

"Fish on a Friday" for those of us over the age of 40 is about as culturally Catholic as ashes on the first day of Lent, the Whit Sunday walks and a statue of the Sacred Heart on your bedside table.

Traditionally, fasting from meat on a Friday was a mark of respect denoting the day of Christ's death. There's fairly compelling evidence to suggest that this practice of weekly abstinence dates back to the early Church with references to it among the writings of Clement of Alexandria and Tertullian, though some accounts state that it took another few hundred years before there was anything like a formal decree from Church authority which forbade meat on a Friday.

Since fish does not bleed, it was never classified as "meat" and was therefore, alongside vegetarian options, deemed an acceptable replacement for animal flesh.

So, I now lay before Herald readers a counter-cultural challenge: it's time to shake up our time-honoured practices and give up fish for Lent.

"Holy Mackerel! What?" you cry.

"Has this man completely lost his moorings?" Well, no, it's just that my outlook on the world has been changed by a devastating book called The End of the Line. The front cover has an endorsement from that icon of sensible moderation, Andrew Marr.

"It is rare that a book changes one's life, even in a small way," Marr wrote of the book: "But I am going to stop buying or eating - from this day forth - Atlantic cod, halibut, sea bass, bluefin tuna, hake and scallops."

The book's author, Charles Clover, does not work for Greenpeace or the World Wildlife Fund - no, he is the environment correspondent for that well-known scourge of tree-huggers, the Daily Telegraph.

He chronicles a devastating picture of how an unholy trinity of growing consumption, efficacious techniques for harvesting fish and pollution of our waters has put our fish stocks in peril. This story of decline began to get truly worldwide attention in the Nineties when the supplies of Atlantic cod in the Grand Banks, a network of underwater plateaus in Newfoundland, fell to record lows.

A fishing ban was introduced, but illegal raids by trawlers from all over the world mean that supplies are still at a critical level. Nearer home, a report last October from the Marine Conservation Society, Silent Seas, said the rate of loss of fish in British seas was accelerating, with formerly abundant species such as the common skate appearing on lists of endangered species.

"Only eight of the total of 47 fish stocks found around the British Isles remain in a healthy state," the report said, adding that the size and quality of the fish is falling as younger fish are taken out of the sea: "A hundred years ago a large plaice had to be 50-60cm long and weigh 1.5-2kg to be considered big. Today plaice fillets are sold as 'large' when they weigh just 125g. Fish this size have never had a chance to breed."

This isn't just a classic animal conservation story. Any Catholic concerned about social justice should look more closely at the societal and economic dynamics of what underpins this process.

Being a bit of a Hispanophile, I tune in once or twice a week to TVE's, Telediario, Spain's equivalent of our BBC Ten O'Clock News. Frequently, there are images of dozens of illegal African immigrants being intercepted by Spanish naval patrol vessels close to the coast of the Canary Islands. Many are allowed to land and tell reporters that they are desperate for work.

Now. if you are a frequent visitor to Spain, you'll know it is a country next to none for the quality of its pescado y mariscos (fish and seafood.) Except in recent years, due to overfishing around EU waters, Spanish trawlers now catch the lion's share of what lands on your plate in Madrid, or Seville, from around the African coast.

The EU pays out handsome sums to many African governments for the right to enter these waters and plunder the oceans. In other words, the government and civil service elites of these nations are more and more minded to view their coastal waters as a bankable source of foreign exchange.

But there is a price. Frequently, locals have been put out of work. Their modest fishing trawlers are no match for the enormous EU vessels, some of which boast fishing nets large enough to accommodate a number of Boeing 747 airplanes. Suddenly, those images of would-be immigrants from Senegal landing in Tenerife take on a whole new meaning, no?

Apart from the injustice, it's also just bad economics. Put simply, once you pass through a threshold of declining supplies, you have to invest huge amounts of money in ever more expensive vessels and technology to land what remains in the seas: a classic case of diminishing returns, if ever there was one.

As long ago as 2001 Nature magazine reported two studies that revealed worldwide supplies of marlin, bluefin tuna, cod and skate were running at a mere 10 per cent of 1950 levels. Clearly what we need is a prolonged period of restraint to allow a healing process of regeneration. And stocks are remarkably resilient if nature is left to just get on with it.

Can faith and religious belief be brought to bear on any of all this? Strangely enough, it's a term from Islamic theology that might best come to our aid here. The Arabic word mizan can best be translated as "dynamic balance". The Koran states that Allah has created the world in a state of dynamic equilibrium. Human rationality and scientific prowess are best brought to bear on the world by, at the same time taking advantage of, but not endangering, that "dynamic balance". In so doing, we act as khalifa or as we might say in the Judeao-Christian parlance, "stewards".

Whatever, the case for abstinence is now overwhelming. If we want to eat fish in the long run, with all the health benefits of Omega 3 fatty acids, then ironically, true investment in our oceans doesn't mean ever more expensive boats and tackle: it means enshrining into our seas a key command we learn about in Leviticus and Deuteronomy (applied to the land): the importance of letting the earth breathe so nature can recharge its batteries.

The good news is that we are beginning to wake up to this dire state of affairs. The Marine Stewardship Council has set up something called Good Catch, a guide to which techniques of fishing are sustainable (normally this means line or pole fishing) and has compiled a list of fish which are OK to eat and those which aren't.

In headline terms, if you can't forego fish for Lent, then there are still 46 varieties to go for, including pollack, tilapia, flounder and organically farmed cod and rainbow trout. Tuna? Skipjack varieties are in reasonable state worldwide but bluefin is an absolute no-no, as are 68 others, including skate, parrotfish and Dublin Bay prawns. If you want a quick way to check, look for a blue MSC label with a "tick" on it among supermarkets that now work to promote sustainability.

It might be a long haul though, since on my less than scientifically constructed local survey of two central London Sainsbury's and a Tesco, I struggled to find even one packet of fish with the magic blue label. As of last July, only eight per cent of the world's fisheries had been certified by the MSC as industries which passed the test of working to promote sustainability of our fishing supplies. This is a situation which could change overnight with an avalanche of consumer power based on correct information and changes of behaviour.

Fish and the symbolism around these aquatic vertebrates are part of our narrative DNA as Christians. It's not just epic stories like the Feeding of the Five Thousand, the prevalence of fishing stories and fishermen in the gospels.

Our ancestors in belief used the symbol of the fish as an acrostic, that is, the Greek word Icthus was commonly held to denote "Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour". In an acrostic formation, the first letter denotes a key word , hence Icthus lends itself to Iesous (Jesus) CHristos (Christ) THeou (God) Uiou (Son) Soter (Saviour.)

So this Lent, (and beyond), maybe instead of (or in addition to) the usual sacrifices of chocolate, alcohol and nicotine, what about reversing centuries of religious dietary tradition? It's high time we focused on fish, before it's too late.

Mark Dowd works for Operation Noah, the first Christian campaign focused exclusively on climate change (www.operationnoah.org)