Fish farmers, don’t you just love 'em! They are masters of the art of public relations. No matter what shit hits their fans they can always engineer a good story to cover their backsides, and, amazingly, persuade some poor-sucker newspaper hack to run with it.

Thus it was that on February 1, The Times ran a news story claiming: "Fish farms are the only way to satisfy appetite for seafood." The fact that fish farms play a huge part of the decline in wild fish stocks seems to have entirely passed by the guy who gulped down their story.

Fish farmers use base-of-the-food chain wild species to produce oil and protein to feed to farm fish, particularly to farmed salmon. Those who farm those pseudo-salmon target species such as sand eels, Norway pout, capelin, sardines and anchovies, which are a basic food for many fish higher up the food chain and for other marine creatures and seabirds. In European, American and Canadian fish farms it is estimated that it requires 2kg to 3kg of fish meal to produce 1kg of farm salmon. In Chile, this figure has been estimated to be up to 10kg of fish meal to produce 1kg of farm fish.

As factory fish farming expands, more and more of these small fish are being caught to the detriment of wild fish stocks and to the communities that rely upon wild fish for their livelihoods. This industry is now targeting krill, one of the building blocks of the marine eco-system.

As I write, in the South Atlantic factory vessels are at work 24 hours a day catching krill to be converted into fish meal to feed farmed fish. Perhaps those so engaged should consider the Cree Indian prophecy: “Only when the last fish has been caught, only then will you find out that money cannot be eaten.”

Still, why should facts stand in the way of a ‘good’ story? After all, everyone has to make a living somehow. So that’s all right then, isn’t it?