A spokesperson for the Sunday Times told the BBC: “The headline and the first sentence of the article over-simplified a complicated issue, which we regret. However, the rest of the story made clear that we were referring to cod over the age of 13 and the figures cited were accurate.”

And what of that other headline – “Just 100 cod left in the North Sea”? Looking at the data, it seems a more accurate headline would read “Just 436,900,000 cod left in the North Sea”. Wrong by about half a billion, then, which is perhaps a new record for the most inaccurate headline ever covered by More or Less. —

BBC News – North Sea cod: Is it true there are only 100 left?.