Commenting on today’s crunch talks in Luxembourg, Struan Stevenson, MEP for Scotland and Senior Vice President of the European Parliament’s Fisheries Committee, has urged ministers to reward those who have made the biggest efforts to fish sustainably and hit hard those who have failed.
He also called on ministers to resist the distorted Green’ agenda that would punish already over-regulated UK fishermen for the mistakes of fleets based mostly in Southern Europe.
Speaking from Strasbourg, he said: Much has been written in the press in the run-up to these talks on calls by Green’ interest groups for even more savage cuts in quota and vast zones designated as marine protected areas closed to all fishing. While it would be foolish to pretend that everything in the marine environment is rosy, it is time for a more realistic appraisal of where our oceans are going. It is worth remembering that the UK demersal fleet, most of it in Scotland, has seen around 60% of its vessels scrapped or decommissioned over the past ten years. It’s time to point the gun elsewhere.
We’ve done our bit. With ten years of vessel decommissioning, enforced tie-ups, savage cuts to TACs (total allowable catches) and quotas, technical measures like mesh sizes and special fishing gears, limits to the days that fishermen can go to sea, designated ports, electronic log books, vessel monitoring by satellite and a thousand and one other laws and regulations, our fishermen have taken the pain. Now they must see some gain. We need to know that all the cuts, lost jobs, low wages and poor profits were, at the end of the day, for a positive purpose.
The European Commission has admitted that the picture in British waters is improving. In their submission to today’s Luxembourg Fisheries Council they state: where the state of stocks has been assessed, they seem to be improving, albeit slowly: the proportion of overfished stocks in the Atlantic and nearby seas fell from 32 out of 34 stocks in 2004 to 18 out of 38 stocks in 2011, ie from 94% to 47%.’ The paper goes on to say that stocks no longer assessed as overfished include blue whiting, Celtic sea sole, West of Scotland haddock, North Sea herring and North Sea plaice, hinting that increased quotas for these stocks may be agreed today for 2012.
It would be a great surprise if all of the sacrifices of the UK and Scottish fleet over the past decade had not yielded positive results. It is time for other member states to follow suit. The Commission document makes it quite clear that the real problems with overfishing and collapsing stocks are in the Mediterranean. Many countries in the Southern parts of Europe have not cut their fleet size and even now are arguing for the reintroduction of subsidies for building and modernising fishing vessels under the proposals for a reformed CFP. France and Spain even tried to derail the proposed ban on discards at the March Fisheries Council, but were out-voted by the other EU Member States. These are the countries where the real cuts must be targeted.
Britain’s fishermen should be rewarded with increased blue whiting, haddock and herring quota. The Commission have pointed out that increases in stock sizes over the past year netted an additional £110 million in income for the fisheries sector. Healthy stocks lead to healthy catches and healthy profits. This must be the way forward. Let’s hope that the ministers meeting in Luxembourg today will reward those who have made the biggest efforts to fish sustainably and hit hard those who have failed.
2010 The Scottish White Fish Producers’ Association