|
Catch 2002: cod fishermen are told their best hope for future is to stop fishing cod
Channel blocked as British, French, Irish, Belgian and Danish trawlermen demonstrate against draconian new quotas
The Independent
By John Lichfield in Paris ~ 12 December 2002
Take one of the world's busiest shipping lanes and add a fleet of the world's angriest fishermen from six different nations and what do you get?
Confusion and maritime jams.
A queue of freighters and oil tankers backed up for many miles on either side of the Straits of Dover yesterday as 80 fishing boats from England, Scotland, France, Ireland, Belgium and Denmark sailed slowly up and down the narrow channel trawling for media attention and political concessions. Most ferry crossings were cancelled because of it.
Other trawlers invaded the harbour at Calais, blaring hooters and trailing red smoke. A flotilla of 50 English boats sailed up the Tyne to Newcastle where skippers ceremonially burnt their catch log-books.
The demonstrations – the first concerted action of their kind by fishermen from different European nations – were aimed at today's summit of EU heads of government in Copenhagen and a critical meeting of EU fisheries ministers in Brussels next week.
Trawlermen are the world's last remaining, large-scale professional hunters. They generally detest their rivals from the next boat, or next port, let alone the next country. The fact that fishermen from different EU nations sailed together in protest yesterday tells you something more than usually calamitous is happening on the storm-washed decks of fisheries politics.
Despite years of dire warnings, cuts in fishing quotas, increases in mesh sizes and scrapping of fishing boats, independent scientists and the European Commission say several of Europe's most important fish stocks are nearing the point of extinction. The International Committee for the Exploration of the Seas (Ices) believes all fishing for cod, haddock and whiting should be abandoned for at least one year in the whole of the North Sea, the Irish Sea, in the Atlantic Ocean west of Scotland and in the Kattegat and Skaggerak between Norway, Denmark and Sweden.
That would, in effect, bring 70 per cent of the British fishing industry to a halt. The European Commission has rejected such doomsday advice but wants catch quotas for "white fish" – fish from the cod family – to be slashed to the minimum quantity capable of keeping fishing fleets and onshore processing industries alive.
Brussels is also, finally, proposing the end of its self- defeating policy of paying to scrap fishing boats with one hand and subsidising the modernisation of fishing fleets – that is, building more powerful, more efficient fish-hoovering boats – with the other.
Although some northern European fishermen's organisations have welcomed the broad thrust of the plans to reform the Common Fisheries Policy, they say the further drastic cuts in catches of cod and other white fish would destroy the industry before the reforms took effect.
They are also alarmed by the prospect of boats from the enormous Spanish fishing fleet entering the North Sea in the new year. Although Spain will have no quotas to catch valuable fish such as cod, its 20-year exclusion from the North Sea – even to catch less prized types of fish – expires in January. British fishermen fear an influx of Spanish boats will increase pressure on all fish stocks, including the threatened species.
The immediate concern of fishermen in yesterday's protest – organised by a new pan- Northern European alliance called the European Fishing Action Group – was the prospect in a cut in their legally permitted EU catch quotas (by up to 80 per cent in some cases).
Jacques Bigot, a French fishermen's leader, said: "This plan boils down to leaving boats in the dock 11 months a year and could put something like 28,000 jobs on the line."
"There are too many cuts too quickly," said Steven Moss, 41, from Blyth, a trawler skipper who took part in the protest on the Tyne. He said Brussels had failed to wait for the benefits of previous quota cuts, and increases in net mesh sizes, to show up in the scientific figures on fish stocks. Cod in the North Sea had already recovered this year, he claimed.
"The future doesn't look good but fishing is all I know and all I want to do," he said.
When the Common Fisheries Policy was agreed more than 20 years ago, it was promised that the pooling of national rights would allow a rational management of fish resources. Catch limits were imposed on the most valuable species and the totals were divided into national quotas. Europe-wide rules on honest catch-reporting and net sizes would, it was claimed, reverse the slow decline in fish stocks, which had already started.
Two decades on, even the European Commission admits that policy lies in ruins. Who is to blame? Fisheries stocks all over the world are threatened with collapse. Pollution and global warming might have played some part, reducing the spawning rate of fish such as cod, which thrive in cold, clean water. The development of more powerful boats, and more effective devices for locating fish shoals, are also partly responsible.
The exclusion of foreign boats from Icelandic and Norwegian waters, and the complete collapse of the Grand Banks fishery off Newfoundland in the 1980s (a dire warning to the EU) have increased fishing pressure on the waters around the British Isles.
But the catch limit and quota system, if properly enforced, should have kept the stocks at least stable. Why have they dwindled to such dangerously low levels? One British scientific study estimates there may be no more than 32,000 ton of adult cod left alive in the North Sea – about one third of the fish needed to preserve a thriving, permanent population.
Brussels and the independent Copenhagen-based Ices says most of the blame must fall on the fishermen themselves. In its last report, Ices spoke guardedly of "discrepancies" between the "official landing figures" and the "actual catches" calculated by its scientists.
To the west of Scotland in the period 1992-95, it said the "real quantities caught" remained impossible to calculate Part of the discrepancy can be attributed to the dumping of fish at sea by trawlers that exceed their quotas. There are also accusations that cod is being vacuumed by Danish and Dutch vessels pursuing lesser species, such as sand-eels, to be ground into animal feed or fertiliser.
Broadly speaking, however, both Ices and the European Commission believe there is – and always had been – systematic cheating and overfishing, which is either missed or covered up by national governments. Franz Fischler, the EU fisheries commissioner, says that the practice is a "disgrace" that cannot be allowed to continue.
As part of its reform of the Common Fisheries Policy, Brussels is proposing that the quota system be reinforced. Fishing boats would be limited to a fixed number of days at sea, according to their quota. One in ten fishing boats would probably have to go.
The arithmetic is simple, EU officials say. Too many, too powerful boats are chasing too few
|
