Maybe call off that order of fish and chips: only about 100 adult cod are left in the North Sea according to recent estimates by marine biologists. Their report, coming to us via The Telegraph which cites a story at the paywalled Sunday Times, emphasizes how desperate the situation is for this species: cod can live 25 years, and the older a fish gets the more fertile it is. "Analysis of around 500,000 fish in England and Wales found 191 million one-year-old cod and just 18 million three-year-olds," The Telegraph reports. 

Chris Darby — the head of the team from the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science, which conducted the research — explained: "Our latest assessments suggest in 2011 there were 600 cod aged 12 to 13 in the North Sea, of which about 200 were caught." No cod over age of 13 were caught in European ports least year, and Darby continued that "analysis of that data suggests there are fewer than 100 such fish in the whole North Sea." 

The UK's Channel 4 points to a report by the New Economics Foundation which advocates a fishing ban. "All fish stocks, including North Sea cod which would take a little over nine years to get back into shape, could be restored within a decade," Channel 4 writes.

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Esther Zuckerman