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Fishing chiefs challenge EU cod plan
Frank Urquhart - furquhart@scotsman.com
The Scotsman
23rd October 2003
Scottish fishermen’s leaders yesterday called for an end to the European Commission’s "hit and hope" solution to the cod stocks crisis.
In a detailed alternative cod recovery plan to be submitted to Franz Fischler, the European Fisheries Commissioner, the Scottish Fishermen’s Federation claims that the current draconian measures being taken by Brussels are doing nothing to restore fragile cod stocks in the North Sea.
They are demanding instead that European fisheries ministers back their radical proposals for a "spatial management" plan which would allow measures to be specifically targeted at cod recovery while allowing Scottish vessels to continue to land their mainstay catches of haddock and prawns in non cod-sensitive areas of the fishing grounds.
Hamish Morrison, the SFF’s chief executive, told a press conference in Aberdeen yesterday: "Government and the European Commission must abandon the ‘hit and hope’ approach to fisheries management. Hitting the fishermen and hoping for cod recovery does not work because it cannot work.
"The recovery plan must be directly focussed on reducing pressure on cod rather than indiscriminate measures which affect all fisheries equally.
"Cod accounts for less than 15 per cent of the white fish catch. It is perfectly possible and indeed desirable that Scotland’s much-diminished white fish fleet should be able to exploit other species."
He said: "Fisheries in haddock, whiting, saithe, nephrops [prawns] and monkfish must be permitted and indeed encouraged without restriction based on theoretical linkage with cod. While vessels are concentrating on these fisheries they reduce, by definition, pressure on cod."
The federation’s radical alternative is based on the creation of three distinct zones: selected areas where fishing would be banned to allow large-scale scientific studies to be conducted; a 40,000-square-mile "cod sensitive" area of the North Sea where fishermen would be allowed to land a restricted amount of white fish catches; and a large tolerance zone, covering more than half of the North Sea, where fishermen would be encouraged to fish through a system of incentives such as the relaxation or scrapping of the catch composition rules and a differential quota system.
Mr Morrison claimed: "This plan is infinitely better than what we have at the moment because it seeks to conserve cod.
"What we have just now is a hit and hope scenario - you keep hitting the fishing fleet in the hope that cod will recover. The two aren’t connected except in the most obscure way."
He stressed: "Scottish fishermen have a deep vested interest in rebuilding the cod stock. If we were able to look forward to a doubling of cod landings, say in five years, it would transform the economic prospects of an otherwise diminished industry.
"The kind of indiscriminate measures that have been employed over the last three years - and the current proposals from the commission propose more of the same - do not work because they cannot work."
Mr Morrison claimed that a blanket ban on cod fishing would destroy the Scottish white fish fleet, but do nothing to help fragile stocks of cod to recover.
He said: "If you take out a large and successful predator - in this case commercial fishing - what is likely to happen is that the strong get stronger and the weak get weaker. And the cod is in a weak position."
Copies of the SFF’s alternative plan are being sent to the European Commission, Euro MPs, Scotland’s fisheries minister Ross Finnie, and MSPs.
Richard Lochhead, the shadow Scottish fisheries minister, was quick to back the SFF’s proposals.
He said: "This new plan is logical and makes perfect sense. Given that Franz Fischler has a bad habit of rejecting anything that is remotely sensible and that would help Scotland, it is vital that all political parties and the government get behind this plan to ensure that it forms the basis of the forthcoming fisheries negotiations."
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