According to a piece in National Geographic News on November 11, 2004, researchers suggested that the EU's appetite for West African seafood may be leading to an increased reliance on bush meat.
Researchers say dwindling fish stocks due to trawling by foreign fishing fleets is a key cause of the increase in the "bush meat" trade in Ghana.
The study, published tomorrow in the journal Science, claims to be the first to provide strong evidence of a link between local fish supply and bush-meat hunting...
Lead author Justin Brashares, assistant professor of ecosystems science at the University of California, Berkeley, says it's likely that other West African countries are similarly affected.
"If people aren't able to get their protein from fish, they'll turn elsewhere for food and economic survival," he said. "Unfortunately the impacts on wild game resources are not sustainable."
A press release from the WWF in 2003
The bush meat trade itself appears linked with recent outbreaks of ebola in west central Africa and the rise of new HIV strains in Cameroon which are not detected by current tests.
Thus, the European appetite for fish may be contributing to an increased rate of disease outbreaks. Not is Europe insulated. Bush meat is making its way back to the UK; other European countries are likely similarly affected.
Given current trends, I would expect overfishing to continue.
West Africa has a large indigenous fishing effort trawling its waters but it is the activities of EU-subsidised and other foreign fleets that have been criticised by conservation groups for accelerating the decline of fish stocks in the region...
The Science study notes that the European Union maintains the largest foreign presence off the coast of West Africa, with EU fish catches increasing 20-fold from 1950 to 2001, and financial subsidies jumping from $6m in 1981 to more than $350m in 2001.
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