My take on this isn't very helpful. I'm not happy about that, as I enjoy wild things and the wilderness more than most.

Sure, sand eels are hoovered up for fishmeal, 66% protein Capelin fishmeal. God knows, I've bought enough of the stuff for animal feed over the years. Animal feed requires high protein ingredients for meat production in pig and poultry feed rations, and as we in Europe have banned meat and bone meal for use in the diet of omnivorous animals, we now use either fishmeal or 60% protein maize gluten (Prairie Meal) to achieve a workable alternative. However, using the vegetarian option does not deliver the amino acid profile required, and therefore the farmed animal does not grow as quickly as the economic model requires, and therefore eats more food than the meat-eating equivalent from south east Asia (Thailand, mainly).

The only way that demand for vast amounts of factory food changes is either that volume food buyers switch to organically and inefficiently produced equivalents, vast numbers of the populace become vegetarian (on macro-economic grounds instead of personal health reasons) or everyone who cares about the planet commits suicide. Frankly, the third option is more likely than the first, in my opinion.

BTW, comparatively expensive fish oil isn't burned for generating electricity. The EU produced fish oil is used almost exclusively in farmed salmon feed, and the volume margarine manufacturers use hardened fish oil from Japan or South America so us European consumers won't whine about them depleting 'our' natural resources. Tallow is used for burning, and used vegetable oil is refined into biodiesel after its life in food production ends. We have been using it in animal feed in the UK, but it is banned for this use from 1st November this year, when all retail used frying oil will be used for non-food uses, mainly biodiesel. The only other possible increase in vegetable oil for burning is rapeseed oil produced from set-aside land, but I believe the political ramifications of burning food in a starving world are long-term unpalatable to the politicos.

So I guess as long as we want to eat more salmon than swim up rivers, we will see a massive reduction in North European sea birds as a direct result, and despite the factual nature of my posting, that saddens me. It seems that it is a market deciding.