Fish under threat from the Common Fisheries Policy

Geoff Meaden who is the Green Party prospective candidate for Canterbury and rather more of an expert on the fishing industry than me, has put together some more pointers on the fishing crisis:

Let me just run through what are the main problems for UK (and other EU) fisheries:


1. The Common Fisheries Policy is a disaster. This has been known for at least a decade but the EU have done almost nothing about it. The worst aspect is that the whole nature of fishing varies considerably from area to area yet all the NE Atlantic seas are managed in the same way - this is simply ludicrous mainly because the problems faced are simply different everywhere. They have still not established small area management policies, and discarding is still heavily practiced.

2. Management of fisheries is made complex because there are very different perceptions among the 4 main interested bodies. These are (i) the EU - who set the rules. (ii) The scientists (including environmentalists) who advise on what should happen. (iii) the the fishers who are often inclined to overfish and who rarely agree with the scientists. (iv) The politicians who generally choose a middle path. Each of these 'sides' tends to exaggerate because they know that they must start off from an extreme position!

3. Overfishing. This is undoubtedly occurring for most stocks - but not for all. This largely occurs because modern technology has made finding and catching of fish far too easy. It would now be possible to fish most North Sea stocks with about two large fishing vessels - about 30 fishers in total.


4. Extremely complex rules. Fishers have an absolute nightmare trying to work out what they are allowed to catch, in what quantity, in what area, at what time, using which methods, and landing into what ports. Rules change very regularly. Rights of access to stocks is extremely complex so it is difficult to work out who is allowed to fish in various areas. There are completely different rules for inshore territorial waters than for the 200 mile Exclusive Economic Zone, and than for the high seas.

5. Climate change is having a very negative effect. The waters are becoming more acidic, and species are also shifting their preferred locations. This makes it difficult in the sense that trophic food webs are out of balance and fishermen don't know what they will be catching. The whole ecology of for instance the English Channel is undergoing a very rapid change.

6. There has been ludicrous levels of subsidies given to fisheries. Ireland was able to completely build not only most of its fishing fleet during the last decade or so but also its main fishing ports. They are now having to scrap manyt of these vessels.

7. Monitoring and Enforcement. Imagine the difficulty of monitoring what is going on. Although a fair amount can be done a huge amount of illegal fishing takes place. Most monitoring is done by air patrols, sea patrols, and by Vessel Monitoring Systems (GPS on board to see where boats are fishing). There are electronic log books for the larger vessels that record catches by location.