Credit: AP Photo/Joshua Goodman |
It’s one of the world’s highest-fetching wild-caught fish, sold for $32 a pound at Whole Foods and served up as meaty fillets on the menus of upscale eateries across the U.S.
But Russia’s obstruction of longstanding conservation efforts, resulting in a unilateral rejection of catch limits for the Chilean sea bass in a protected region off the coast of South America, has triggered a fish fight at the bottom of the world, one dividing longtime allies, the U.S. and U.K. governments. |
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The diplomatic feud, which has not been previously reported, intensified after the U.K. quietly issued licenses this spring to fish for the sea bass off the coast of South Georgia, a remote, uninhabited U.K.-controlled island some 1,400 kilometers east of the Falkland Islands.
As a result, for the first time since governments banded together 40 years ago to protect marine life near the South Pole, deep-sea fishing for the pointy-toothed fish is proceeding this season without any catch limit from the 26-member Commission on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources or CCAMLR. |
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