Petition End the practise of discarding (throwing away perfectly good fish due to EU quotas)

Discarding is the action that fisherman carry out when they catch fish in their nets that they have already reached their quote of (as defined by the EU).
Currently, EU boats in the North Sea have to throw away up to half of what they catch to stay within their quotas.

The problem is that in a mixed fishery where many different fish live together, fishermen cannot control the species that they catch.

Fishing for one species often means catching another, and if people don’t want them or fishermen are not allowed to land them, the only option is to throw them overboard. The vast majority of these discarded fish will die.

Because discards are not monitored, it is difficult to know exactly how many fish are being thrown away. The EU estimates that in the North Sea, discards are between 40% and 60% of the total catch. Many of these fish are species that have fallen out of fashion: we can help to prevent their discard just by rediscovering our taste for them.