Thursday, 29th January 2009
Don’t net the sea anglers
Red tape from Brussels has now engulfed almost every other aspect of our lives and hapless sea anglers are the latest target.
From Lerwick to Lisbon and from Sandhaven to Salerno, literally millions of people love to fish during holidays and weekends, across Europe.
It’s one of the most popular pastimes and injects billions into the tourist economy.
It’s estimated that the overall impact of sea anglers on fish stocks is extremely low, perhaps only 1%, compared to the 99% caught by commercial fishermen.
But now the European Commission has published a draft regulation which will bring Brussels bureaucracy smashing down on recreational anglers who land the occasional cod, pollack or mackerel.
Article 47 of the new regulation stipulates that sea anglers will have to register their boats and log every fish they catch. EU Member States will be forced to allocate quotas for the recreational angling sector and this will be deducted from the national quota for that species.
With national quotas for commercial trawlers being slashed by Brussels year on year, fishermen are furious that a slice of their quota will go to the sea anglers. They complain they have little enough quota to earn them a living as it is without giving more away to weekend anglers.
Under the scheme, recreational anglers would be prohibited from selling any of their catch. But in fact very few sport fishermen do so. The majority of sea anglers tag and return their catch alive, keeping an occasional fish for personal consumption.
Indeed Scotland's recreational anglers have been at the forefront of conservation measures aimed at saving the spiny dogfish, a small endangered shark species, from extinction. By tagging and returning all spiny dogfish to the sea, Scotland's recreational anglers have provided invaluable data on the state and movement of the stock, enabling positive control measures to be put in place by the Scottish government.
It seems bizarre that this highly responsible and positive contribution to conservation should now be rewarded by an outright assault from the European Commission.
I fully support measures which will ensure compliance with the rules and regulations of the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP). No fewer than sixteen separate stocks of fish are under threat of imminent collapse in EU waters. But applying the full rigours of the CFP to sea anglers is using a hammer to crack a nut!
There can be no justification for insisting on a plethora of new licences, registers, log books and controls for fishermen who simply want to enjoy a day out, in pursuit of a harmless hobby which has been around for centuries.
The net benefit to fish stocks would be negligible, while the net impact on the tourist sector will be disastrous. At a time of deepening recession, such a policy must be viewed as perverse.
If the European Commission really wants to help endangered fish stocks it should immediately ban the ludicrous practice of discards, which results in up to one million tonnes of good, healthy fish being thrown dead back into the sea every year in Europe.
It’s Brussels policy which forces this madness to continue. Commercial fishermen caught trying to land under-sized or out of quota fish will be prosecuted and receive a criminal conviction, so they have no alternative but to throw them back over the side. Instead of targeting sport fishermen, the Commission should be looking to introduce a 'land-all' policy for commercial skippers, similar to Norway.
Article 47 will come before the European Parliament's Fisheries Committee this month, where I‘ll seek to delete the part of the regulation that would apply the full rigour of the CFP to recreational anglers.
The Commission is desperate to rush through the legislation before Parliament closes in early May for the Euro elections. So time is short.
If we’re to ensure that sea anglers are to stay clear of fish quotas and all the red tape and expenses that goes with them, then we need to speak out now.
