An advertisement by Crimestoppers aimed at combatting illegal fishing has been banned by the Advertising Standards Authority.

The advertisement which ran in the Bridgewater Mercury newspaper claimed that "Over the past 20 years elver stocks have fallen by 95 per cent". The advert received one complaint from a fisherman who claimed the statistic didn't match figures quoted by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra). Defra statistics, he claimed, showed that eel stocks in 1992 stood at five tonnes while 20 years later production was at three tonnes.

The ASA upheld the complaint, after analysing statistics used as evidence by Crimestoppers, on the basis that the charity had incorrectly portrayed the timescale and volume of the decline in stock. The ASA said:

"Although we noted that the EIFAA/ICES graph showed that there had been some significant fall in stocks since the 1950s and 60s, it did not suggest that stock levels had fallen by 95 per cent since the early 1990s, as the claim suggests." 

The advert was misleading and unsubstantiated, said the ASA, which ordered the ad not to appear again in its current form.

Crimestoppers teamed up with the Environment Agency in July 2011 to "stamp out environmental crime". The collaboration offered a new anonymous way for the public to report incidents of environmental crime and "help the Environment Agency bring successful prosecutions against those who flout the law and bring misery to people and damage the environment," Dave Cording, Crimestoppers' Deputy chief executive said at the time. The collaboration has a specific focus on waste and fisheries crime.