By Michael Smith (Veshengro)
Fishermen will be banned, under new rules and guidelines, to become legislation, of the EU, from throwing dead catch back into the sea in the most radical reform of their industry in 40 years.
The shake-up completes a victory for campaigning TV chefs and their 700,000 supporters who signed a petition demanding seafood is produced more ethically and it will end a practice which sees 4 million tonnes of edible fish, including threatened species such as cod and haddock, being thrown back every year because of quota rules.
TV chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall said he was delighted that the European Commission was implementing changes and said: “The current system is bankrupt, as the compulsory discarding of millions of tonnes of fish every year demonstrates.”
Fishermen throw back up to 80 per cent of their catch because the fish are the wrong size or because of rules on quotas, sending stocks in the North Sea plunging to less than ten per cent of post-war levels.
In addition to that there are the kind of fish that are being thrown back that are not, generally, on the menu because people do not know and understand those fish. Pollock is one of those and, as far as I am concerned, I prefer Pollock to Cod.
On Wednesday, July 13, 2011, the EC has been outlining reforms to its common fisheries policy to limit catches to sustainable levels by 2015.
It admits some fishermen will lose their jobs but says that without action to protect stocks, the losses will be even worse.
The proposals will include providing support for fishermen to retire and a more scientific approach to managing stocks.
MEPs have 12 months to consult on the plans before they are made law next year.
Liberal Democrat MEP and founder of the Fish For The Future group Chris Davies said: “Our waters are capable of supporting many times more fish than now exist. It is not too late for the situation to be reversed, but we have now reached a crisis point.”
And, we must not forget that, if the public can be educated to eating other, equally good edible fish, such as the afore-mentioned Pollock, we can reverse things. The stocks of threatened fish can be permitted to recover while the consumer eats the fish of which there still is an abundance.
Like in other aspects management is the key, and this is true for fishing grounds as it is for farms and game estates.
However, man has gone around catching fish and killing deer and other animals as if there was a supply that would go on ad infinitum. When someone then points out that this is not the case counterclaims are made stating that the stocks of fish (or whatever) are not actually low or threatened.
No one wanted to believe that the Grand Banks fishing grounds off Labrador were under threat until, suddenly, there were no longer any cod to be had there. This is now a couple of decades past and still the stocks are nigh non existent.
Nature is not something that we can go on exploiting without impunity.
© 2011
