Tomorrow there is an important vote on the future of the Common Fisheries Policy. It seems likely that a UK (Scottish) MEP may hold the balance of power over whether overfishing continues or begins to diminish. That MEP is Struan Stevenson.
When I wrote to Richard Benyon on this subject in the early part of the year I received this reply from Defra:
29 February 2012
Dear Mr Avery,
Common Fisheries Policy
Thank you for your email of 24 February to Richard Benyon about the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP). I have been asked to reply.
The UK has been leading the way for radical reform with an aim to deliver sustainable fish stocks, a healthy marine environment and a prosperous fishing industry. This means getting a CFP that secures genuine integration of fisheries management with other marine environmental policies, including delivery of Good Environmental Status through the Marine Strategy Framework Directive.
This also means achieving Maximum Sustainable Yield in line with existing commitments, taking into account the complexities of mixed fisheries. With this in mind Defra is aiming to manage fish mortality in a way that is consistent with internationally agreed, science-based targets. While we appreciate the view that fish stocks should be referenced to historic levels, scientific evidence also makes clear that it is not always possible to return to the historic stock levels being advocated. This is because in many cases the biological and climatic conditions have changed significantly. Not only have increases in water temperature and acidity altered the potential species balance, but also so have changes in the predator-prey structure, meaning that certain species can no longer thrive, even under greater protection.
The Government want to see a profitable, sustainable fishing industry and believe we can achieve this through a more flexible system of managing quota rights so that fishermen are able to plan for the long term. However, this should not mean imposing the same system across all Member States. A more flexible regulatory framework will also help to drive the necessary changes in fishing activity and behaviour to help eliminate discards.
Our planned network of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) will contribute to protecting the UK’s rich marine environment, habitats and wildlife. The network will be made up of existing and new MPAs, including Marine Conservation Zones designated under the Marine and Coastal Access Act. It will be important that fishermen, Government and scientists work closely in partnership to manage our planned network of MPAs. We will encourage these partnerships to continue, and be strengthened, through reform of the CFP.
The new CFP must achieve coherence between EU fisheries and development policies. It is important that there is transparency in dealings with developing countries, and more emphasis on strengthening partnerships with international organisations and third countries to achieve improved international fisheries governance.
Well, sounds good really doesn’t it? But we found out last week that Defra is dragging its feet terribly on Marine Protected Areas – that’s not the fault of the EU or the Common Fisheries Policy – it’s the fault of our elected politicians in Defra.
But tomorrow, a UK elected MEP has the opportunity to vote for better conservation of fish stocks which will be better for fishermen (in the long term) and better for marine wildlife.
We need to manage EU fish stocks much better – and in a much longer term way. If we fish less for a while stocks will recover and then we can catch many more fish in the future. That’s the simple science that I learned at university about Maximum Sustainable Yields – where those words mean just what you think they do. If you fish a little you leave fish that you could safely have caught in the sea. But if you fish too much you reduce the stock and reduce your long term catches. For every fish stock there is a Maximum Sustainable Yield which is the most fish that you can catch year after year after year.
In practice MSYs are a little bit tricky to work out because the marine environment is complicated and variable, but also in practice commercial fisheries are usually taking far too many fish out of the sea and are miles away from the MSY. Tomorrow’s vote aims to put a bit of science and common sense into the Common Fisheries Policy – and that’s what Struan Stevenson should be voting for.
Here’s a useful video on the problem of overfishing by the EU.
To help Struan Stevenson make the right decision please sign this petition. If you do you are trying to help seabirds, whales and a lot of fish species to have an easier life – but also helping fishermen to have a brighter future too.
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This issue is so important. It is very interesting the backlash at the badger cull. The proposed badger cull was to cull a number of badgers in small areas. The science may well be bad (I don’t know) but however there would be no ecological disaster in fact a few ground nesting birds and hedgehogs may possibly benefit.
There is very little anger at overfishing, it happens where we can’t see, we all eat fish so are guilty by association and let’s face it a cod will never be as cute as a badger. However pillaging the oceans with more and more efficient (deadly) boats and rigs affects the largest ecosystem in the UK, it threatens to further devastate this ecosystem, prevent seabirds feeding, threatens the livelyhood of fishermen and just makes no longterm economic sense.
This blog has been excellent at highlighting marine conservation issues. Any science based conservationist should regard marine issues well above badgers, harriers, farmland birds etc in my opinion (although they are all important).
I agree with Mark (Avery and Gibbens !). This is so hugely important – and once again, juts like over DDT, birds are our canary in the mine, with RSPB’s brilliant tracking of feeding seabirds around our coasts a crucial, frightening and visible indicator of how bad things have got.
I found the third paragraph of the Defra response particularly chilling. What it is saying, in civilservice-eeze, is that we have trashed some (many ?) fisheries beyond recovery. Actually, what they’ve said isn’t that opaque – whatever Mr Benyon may be thinking, I reckon the Defra fisheries scientists are looking for our help – it must be soul destroying to see all your gloomiest predictions coming true and worse. Unlike most of us for whom what goes on below the surface is at best a bit blurry, they must have a very clear picture of what is going on and it can’t be pretty.
I know nothing about this but, to a layman, MSY does seem potentially very variable and Govt edicts potentially very static and long term and the 2 don’t necessarily mix. What we actually need is a fish Micawber Principle “Annual fishable and available stock 10 tons, annual harvest 9.5 tons result healthy fish stock etc….” What we also need of course is several urgent MCZs. Why is this so difficult (that is being said by someone who lives in a landlocked County).
Bob – you are right to think that way, but also right that it is a bit difficult. Fish stocks are tricky to measure. Imagine that you surveyed gannets in the breeding season by dragging a big net around the coast of Britain with your eyes closed and then estimated the gannet population by how many gannets there were in your net. And then imagine that the gannets don’t make it easy by sticking to the same places each year – they move around. Estimating fish stocks is a bit like that.
Fish do make it easier by being ageable – is that a real word? In other words the fish you get in your net can be aged so that you know how many one-, two-, three-year-old fish there are. That helps. But then many fish have boom and bust years so that it takes quite a few years before you know how good a ‘breeding season’ it was in, say, 2009. By 2012 you have had four years of guessing at the strength of the 2009 cohort from the number of 0-year old, 1-year-old, 2-year-old and 3-year-old fish you caught. And fish of different ages may live in different places or at different depths in the water column so fish can keep you guessing for a long time.
A fisherman was interviewed on radio 4 this morning and said that it was ridiculous that he was being prevented from fishing when there were still plenty of cod in the sea. He seemed to have got into the mind set that all of the cod are there for the taking and doesnt seem to have had a clue about the principles of sustainable yields.
I would like to see an end to industrial exploitation of fish stocks and a return to localised inshore fishing, preferably done with rod and line. These beam trawls have absolutely trashed the ocean floor. I read somewhere that many fishing grounds can be likened to an agricultural field being ploughed a dozen or more times a year and how much productivity would arise from this situation ? Our fish stocks should be recognised as a food resource for the UK alone and all of this commercial fishing based on international trade should cease. After all what is the point of us selling our fish to Spain and then having to import exotic freshwater fish species from Indonesia….Crazy
Charles Clover in his excellent book “End of the Line” mentions the Icelandic fishing industry where after several years of setting low quotas and causing widespread anger in the country, the government have since been able to increase the cod quota by 30,000 tons. Icelandic cod stocks are said to be about the only place in the world where they are increasing.
DavidH – I tend to agree with you. i think we should be scooping lots of fish out of the sea for food but we should do it in a much more intelligent way – that will help save some nature on land.
David H echoes my worries.
And I think the idea that ‘we’ eat all the fish that is caught is wrong. I think I read somewhere once that a great deal of the worlds fish catches are turned into fertilisers and/or animal food. It would certainly be a major step forward for the marine environment if industrial scale fishing could be outlawed, the global trade in fish [like Shark fins] could be banned and catching of fish which are now very rare [like Blue Tuna] were banned. Did I read over the weekend that some person in Japan has a vast amount of Blue Tuna deep frozen waiting for the time when the fish is extinct, so he can sell it for even more of a fortune than it is worth now. To me that says it all.
I also agree that as a nation we are no where near angry enough about what is happening to the marine environment. Having been birding in all but one [Indian] of the worlds oceans – I end up so angry it scares me.
Stella
Agree that feeding fish proteins as an animal food to produce more fish or animal meat is crazy. A large percentage of the protein is lost in this process. We should really be eating the fish pellets instead of the farmed salmon!. Anyone ever tasted some of the scottish produced bacon which tastes of fish, because ffish meal is fed to the pigs.
Farmed fish sounds like a good idea but as in the case of farmed salmon an area can become over run with fish parasites which can cause death of wild salmon and sea trout and seriously deplete their populations.
The Marine Conservation Society has an information leaflet which advises what type of fish to eat.
http://www.goodfishguide.co.uk/pocket-goodfishguide
We really need to start farming fish which are vegetarians such as carp. Carp has been farmed in the past in the UK and is still a popular food in eastern europe. Just imagine all of that good wildlife habitat if we started constructing more carp ponds.
David,
Personally I think the fishermen that was being interviewed by Radio 4 was in the minority of one, there are plenty of fishermen trawling the Atlantic, who celebrate the rare day/night when the nets are lifted to reveal a good catch of cod, alot of the old cod boats in Scotland now diversify their catch because Cod catches are so low. Talk to them and they talk of the “good old days when cod WAS plentiful”. And as for selling the fish to Spain, it’s an auction when the catch is landed and is a simple case of whom is willing to pay the most. Also Spain traditionally eat a lot more fish then the UK. Market forces and all that means you just can’t simply say which country the fish is sold, though I do have to agree it seems mad that alot of fish consumed in the UK comes from afar, but is that because we wish to be “trendy” and eat more exotic fish instead of the “plain Janes” like Cod and Skate, next time you’re at the Supermarket go up to the fish counter and ask what the most popular sellers are. Think about it, when was the last time you saw Nigella doing a bit of cod?
As for Iceland, and there Cod population, I can think of two reasons why Cod is doing ok there compared to waters of the UK. I think Cod is doing ok in Icelandic waters because the temperature hasn’t raised as steeply as that off the UK and secondly Iceland don’t stick to EU quota systems, not EU members but a “candidate” country, ask some of the Scot fishermen what they think of Icelandic trawlermen, some will wave two fingers, some spit and some scream “foul play”, so if they’re busy fishing cod stocks in EU waters of course there own stock is going to be ok.
It’s a tricky situation and one I feel isn’t going to be sorted to a satisfactory conclusion any time soon. As a footnote if you own a dog/cat there is a very popular fish treat that looks like a grey cube, made from the main fish that Puffins eat it’s got to be worth boycotting it and maybe that’s the solution boycott all fish products until a resolution is agreed?
Got to go my fish supper is getting cold 🙁
Douglas when I was younger (almost 40 years ago) we used to go boat fishing on the Clyde estuary near Glasgow and on the adjoining sea lochs. My best fishing moment ever was when I rod caught three cod at once each of around 20lbs weight. We used to have a chest freezer and every fish we caught we ate.
There was always a bit of publicity in the fishing press about the large catches being made here. One year this attracted some large trawlers which totally cleaned out all of the large cod in all of these sea lochs during the night. Since then these fish stocks have never recovered.
It should be a simple matter to enforce marine protected zones on these sea lochs. Fish stocks would increase along with tourism.
Can we not find a way to catch all of these scottish midges to use as a food source on fish farms b!!
Totally agree with you about how easy and practical it woud be to protect sea lochs and equally the seas around the UK coastline. I dug out an old newsletter/magazine from the Norfolk Wildlife Trust today, in it they had published some old black and white images of what fishing in Norfolk was like, it was very intersresting to see not only the species of fish, no longer being caught, because they’ve gone, but depressing to see the quantities, PURE GLUTTONY. For example a haul of white fish that was piled on the dock and stood taller then the fisherman next to it.
Not sure about the midges I think they play an important part in the ecosystem just to be harvested for fish farms, plus they never seem to bite me so I like them 🙂