A sudden flurry of stories in the media that serve to highlight the overfishing crisis. First up, the Japanese who are clearly the most irresponsible and abusive nation in terms of their consumption of endangered species:

Whale Meat Back On School Lunch Menus

Japan’s appetite for fish is depleting stocks, threatening restaurants

Does Japan’s affair with tuna mean loving it to extinction?

I tend to think of fish in terms of the oceans, but there are big problems in freshwater fish also. In Africa, fish extinctions spell disaster:

GENEVA: Millions of Africans may lose a key source of livelihoods as a fifth of freshwater African species are threatened with extinction, according to the Red List of endangered species.

Scientists conducting a survey on 5167 African freshwater species found that about 21 per cent of species of fish, molluscs, crabs, dragonflies and aquatic plants were at risk of becoming extinct, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature said yesterday.

As fish is the main source of protein and livelihoods for many of Africa’s poorest, the disappearance of fish species could devastate the population, the organisation said.

About 7.5 million people in sub-Saharan Africa are thought to depend on fisheries.