Dear Editor,
I read George Monbiot's piece of discarded fishing nets drifting around and thereby causing the death of massive numbers of fish and other marine life (Opinion, The Guardian, 19th Jan 2020, link below) and, yes, this is truly shocking!
Indeed, as George mentions, action needs to be (urgently!) taken. But one point was missing from his assessment of the situation: Why are people not discussing legislation on the material used to make nets? Why not return to natural fibres (such as hemp)? If it were forbidden (or heavily taxed) to buy fish caught by plastic nets, then the problem would start to solve itself. And a whole new industry of net-production and maintenance would spring up. On top of this, hemp nets are more visible than plastic nets so the fish would have a marginally better chance of avoiding capture.
Those nets would be significantly more expensive than plastic nets so there would also be an incentive to "repair rather than discard" and, most importantly, any discarded nets would rot away in a few months.
So why not give it a try? Or at least add this point to the discussion?
PS: Intensive factory-fishing is not really practical without plastic nets so that would be an added bonus to force us away from such destructive modes of fishing back to smaller boats and more local fleets.
Regards
