According to The Times, the British Government’s top science advisor and his wife owns a consulting firm which manages fisheries that zoologists say is catching tens of thousands threatened fish in the Indian Ocean.
Professor John Beddington and his wife are sole shareholders in, and last year made some 550,000 euros from, the Marine Resources Assessment Group (MRAG), which manages fisheries and provides specialist advise on a global basis.
A report from the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), which manages London Zoo, now claims that commercial fishing managed by his company in the Chagos archipelago off the Maldives is “almost certainly having detrimental effects on the ecosystem”.
The Chagos archipelago consists of about 55 islands in British territorial water south of the Maldives, and The Foreign Office awarded MRAG a contract to manage commercial fishing around the islands in 2005.
The recent ZSL report claims that tens of thousands of ray fish and sharks, described as vulnerable or “near threatened” species, have been caught in these waters by trawlers, primarily as bycatch from tuna fisheries.
“You can’t say it is a well-managed fishery,” Heather Koldeway, the report’s author, told The Times. “The amount of bycatch is immense and there are species in it which are threatened.”
As the Government’s chief scientific advisor, Beddington has warned against overfishing, but MRAG is now opposing plans from Foreign secretary David Miliband to ban fishing in the area and establish it as one of the world’s largest marine reserves.