Wednesday, 8th October 2008
End the fish discards obscenity
According to the Food & Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), around 7.3 million tonnes of fish are being dumped overboard by fishermen around the world every year. Although this is a dramatic fall from the estimated 27 million tonnes that the FAO calculated was being dumped a decade ago, it is nothing to celebrate. The number of fish being discarded has fallen because global fish stocks are collapsing. Fishermen are catching fewer fish and therefore they are dumping fewer fish.
There are an estimated 850 million people in the world today suffering from hunger. It is an obscenity that we stand idly by and watch the wanton destruction of global fish stocks and the dumping of unwanted and juvenile fish on this appalling scale.
In the EU, where ICES say that 16 separate fish stocks are on the verge of collapse, we nevertheless see more than 800,000 tonnes of fish being discarded annually. The problem is particularly prevalent in the North Sea where around 70% of discards are demersal roundfish (e.g. cod and haddock) and flatfish. It was therefore very encouraging to see the Scottish Government focusing on this dilemma and holding a special summit in Edinburgh last month, where they brought together skippers, fisheries managers, environmentalists and scientists.
EU phasing out discards – too slowly
Although the European Commission has agreed to phase out discards, they have conceded that their plans may take more than a decade to implement. That means another 8 million tonnes of fish could be dumped overboard from EU vessels in the next ten years. This is simply not good enough.
In contrast, the Danish government’s initiative on this issue should be applauded. They have fitted weatherproof cameras to six trawlers on an experimental basis, to monitor all their fishing activities and to prove that they are not discarding fish. The participating fishermen have been awarded with a higher share of cod quotas as an incentive. Under the Danish scheme, all fish caught will be carefully monitored and counted against quota, so there is little to be gained by discarding and much to be gained by fitting more selective gear.
In Norway, it is illegal to discard fish and all catches must be landed. This provides Norwegian scientists with a much more accurate picture of the state of fish stocks on which they can base their management strategies. It also allows them immediately to close down areas where juvenile fish are being caught, allowing them to mature. But the opposite is the case in the EU where discarding has been forced upon our fishermen by the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP). If a fisherman attempts to land an undersize or out of quota fish, he will be prosecuted and end up with a criminal conviction and a hefty fine. Rather than face criminal charges, our fishermen have no alternative other than to dump such fish over the side.
Ludicrous EU control system to blame
Much of this problem can be traced to the way in which we operate our current system of fisheries management. Under the CFP, Brussels has imposed a ludicrously complex system of TACs (Total Allowable Catches), quotas and effort limitation (or restrictions on the number of days a fisherman can go to sea). As well as being the primary cause of discards, this mixed bag of controls, introduced mainly to aid cod recovery in the North Sea, has failed to stop a rapid decline in cod stocks and in addition, has led to over 60% of the UK whitefish fleet being scrapped in the past 6 years. This has not been the only cause of discards, however. Some fishermen have been guilty of high-grading, which involves dumping good healthy marketable fish, to make room in the hold for bigger, plumper and more expensive ones. Thankfully, this deplorable behaviour is less common now and seems to be on the decline.
'Days at sea'
A much better system of management would be to do away with TACs and quotas and rely solely on a 'days at sea' policy, where fishermen could land everything they catch in the days each month they are allowed to fish. This management system would reverse the current policy on discards. Instead of being compelled to dump fish over the side, fishermen would be compelled to land everything. It would become an offence to discard undersize or out of quota fish. The proposal from the European Commission to consider changing to a rights based system of ITQs for managing Europe’s fisheries could provide the breakthrough we need on discards. However, the threat to relative stability and the grim prospect of Scotland’s waters being opened up further to foreign fishing vessels could undermine the plan.
‘Land-all’
Under a ‘land-all’ policy, undersize fish and other species which previously would have been discarded could be sold to the processing sector, which is desperate for raw material to supply the fishmeal and fish oil industry. The decline in the sandeel fishery in the North Sea, coupled with a dramatic rise in the price of imported fishmeal from Chile and Peru, has placed a considerable strain on Scotland's burgeoning aquaculture sector which relies on fishmeal as a staple diet for farmed fish. The fishmeal industry would be prepared to pay for such un-commercial fish at a price of around £50 per tonne, which is too little to encourage targeting of these species, but too much to encourage continued dumping into the sea, which would be prohibited under these new regulations and monitored with Danish-style on-board cameras.
Options will please public, but need to help fishermen too
Whatever new scheme the Commission comes up with is destined to be more popular with the European public than with EU fishermen. In the eyes of the public, the wasteful discarding of 800,000 tonnes of healthy fish each year is the unacceptable face of Europe's fisheries policy. The clamour for reform has been constant, and it appears the demands may soon be answered.
