Grounds for Optimism Fisheries Deal is a Genuine Breakthrough

FOR once the European fisheries negotiations have produced a genuine breakthrough in the the annual stand-off between the short- term interests of the fishing fleets and the long-term interests of conserving stocks. A unique deal with the UKGovernment, but which will be implemented by Scottish ministers for the Scottish fleet, will reward skippers who take measures to avoid catching young stock and co-operate with observers. This is long overdue. The quota system, the result of trying to parcel out fishing rights between all the member states of the EU, has never had much credibility in the UK, and especially in Scotland, where the traditional fishing grounds are also the richest. All pretence of rationality was lost, however, once it became known that billions of dead fish were being dumped back in the sea because they were the wrong species or the wrong size and it would be illegal to land them.

Disgust at this obscene practice has already prompted the Scottish fleet to take some conservation measures, but the new deal should help to avoid it. Measures such as changing the mesh size of nets to allow juvenile fish to escape are no more than common sense and should have been implemented long ago. The Scottish whitefish fleet is not specifically fishing for cod and so voluntarily closing grounds where large numbers of young cod are discovered should help to avoid catching fish they don’t want, while giving extra days to skippers with less than 5per cent cod in their total catch per trip turns it into a win-win deal.

There will still be cuts in quotas and in the number of days allowed at sea, particularly for the pelagic fleet – down to 25 boats – which faces a 40per cent cut in North Sea herring and a 20per cent cut in west coast herring. Their representative warns of belt-tightening and possibly worse, but the new quotas must be seen against the serious depletion of fish in both the North Sea and the Atlantic. We cannot afford to ignore the lesson of the Grand Banks off Newfoundland. In the sixteenth century they famously teemed with cod so large that sailors talked of walking from their ships across the backs of the fish to reach land. Fishermen made good catches there for centuries, but in 2002 the fishery closed because it was fished out. Five years on, there are still no cod off the Grand Banks.

Our own once bounteous fishing grounds yield a fraction of the catch they once did and most of the cod eaten in Britain now comes from the Barents Sea and from Iceland. We could learn from them. Iceland, for example, has a system of tradeable catches, so that if skippers catch more than their quota of a particular species, they can buy a quota from another boat.

This latest deal is a small step forward, but similar incentives need to be implemented in the rest of the EU. Scientists have warned that without conservation measures, this century will be the last to have any wild sea fish, with stocks exhausted by 2048.

As the fishermen point out, no-one has a greater interest than they do in preserving the fishing stocks. They now have a real incentive to act accordingly: it is up to them and the governments at Westminster and Holyrood to lead the way.

Originally published by Newsquest Media Group.

(c) 2007 Herald, The; Glasgow (UK). Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.