Edinburgh - Large swathes of the North Sea were off-limits to cod fishermen yesterday as emergency measures to save stocks of Britain's favourite fish from extinction came into effect.
Under the measures agreed in January with non-EU member Norway, deep-sea cod fishing in around one-fifth of the North Sea will be banned over the key 10-week cod-spawning period until the end of April. Scientists say years of over-fishing, among other factors, have decimated damaged the sea's cod population so severely it may never recover.