Postscript
Mass murders
Patrick Marnham
The EEC agreement which has just ended a seven-year fishing dispute has been described as 'superb' for Britain, and even the Danes are happy. But what about .the fish? From the point of view of the average North Sea fish this has been a disastrous few months. Under the new agreement the first 20,000 `tonnes' of mackerel caught every year for the next 20 years is consigned to the Danish
fishermen. But if 20,000 tonnes of mackerel are not around because of over-fishing then some other fish will be lined up as a consolation prize. As every experienced mackerel spinner knows, mackerel do not always arrive in expected numbers or at ex- pected times. They prefer warm water with plenty of dirt in it — sewage outlets are usually a promising patch for the mackerel spinner — but even then they cannot be counted on. Tonnes of mackerel are likely to disappoint the Danes quite frequently, which will alarm all the other edible species in the North Sea.
Things are bad enough since the Norwegians banned their annual seal pup cull. An adult seal eats about ten fish a day and this Norwegian ban means that 73 million North Sea fish will not survive 1983. Meanwhile, over in Newfoundland 200,000 animal lovers are splashing around trying to save the lives of a further 200,000 seal pups, with possibly terminal consequences for a further 730 million Atlantic codlings. For the thoughtful animal lover this is 'a no-win situation'. On the one hand his researchers tell him that angling is cruel because, con- trary to the views of anglers, fish feel pain when they are caught. On the other hand he is asked to release 200,000 furry little mass murderers into the fishes' peaceful under- water world.
Above ground a similar moral dilemma is posed by the news that the ChineSe govern- ment is at last making strenuous efforts to dissuade the peasantry from killing its baby girls quite so 'frequently. It seems that in many Chinese communes only 200 girls sur- vive out of every 250 born. This is due to the ancient custom of female infanticide, either by exposure or by drowning. Most societies that do not know about abortion go in for infanticide. In China peasant mothers have traditionally faced a beating from their husbands and mothers-in-law for bearing baby girls, since only sons can hand down the family name and nourish the ancestors. Without a son there are no descendants. Now the government has launched a campaign to persuade the peasants to limit themselves to one child per family. Few families are very happy about it if that one child is female, with the foreseeable consequences described.
So, on the one hand we have this barbaric practice of murdering baby girls and we naturally support the Chinese government's humanitarian efforts. On the other hand we have those appalling figures at the back of our minds which suggest that one in every four people born today is born Chinese, and aren't there rather a lot of them already, and where are they all going to fit? One ends up muttering about peasant bar- barity while trying to calculate how many grandchildren those missing 50 baby girls would have been responsible for by the year 2020.
Perhaps if the Chinese could be taught to swim and the seal pups could be taught to vary their diet, the animal lovers, at least, would be happy.
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