Leave the EU and save Fish & Lives.

Leave the EU and save Fish & Lives.

If the United Kingdom leaves the EU then it will give this nation the opportunity to save lives in the fishing industry and preserve fish stocks in the Atlantic Ocean. If the nation remains chained to this bureaucratic behemoth then there will be continued death and destruction of fisherfolk, and their communities, and an inevitable ecological disaster for fish stocks in the Atlantic Ocean and beyond.

In the past decade, 94 fishermen have died at sea in the UK, 529 fishermen have suffered serious injury and 210 fishing vessels have been lost. There have been 3,326 accidents on UK fishing vessels in these last 10 years. The United Kingdom has approximately 12,000 fisherfolk and they are engaged in what is the most dangerous occupation there is other than warfare. Our membership of the EU has done nothing to correct or alleviate this continued tradegy; membership of the EU has exacerbated the situation in many ways. Sadly, while the fatal accident rate for almost all other UK occupations had fallen sharply over the last 30 years, there had been no discernible reduction in the fishing industry.

BACKGROUND

Britain’s sea fisheries have been protected and controlled by authority of Parliament for nearly 200 years. During that time fish stocks have risen and declined regularly with the combined effects of nature and man. However now stocks have been under severe pressure, and efficiencies realised from improving technology and the high demand for fish have led to over fishing, which has placed grave pressure on fish stocks.   In 1973 the UK became a member of the European Economic Community (EEC); subsequent agreement to the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP), signified compliance with Community legislation regarding vessel safety and fish stock regulations. The United Nations Law of the Sea states: “The exclusive economic zone shall not extend beyond 200 nautical miles from the baselines” but when the UK joined the EU its fishing rights were reduced by the EU to a mere 12 miles.

The European Union is the world's third-largest fishing power after China and Peru, with a fleet of vessels more than 97,000 strong. Europe wide, some 260,000 fishermen are directly employed in catching fish, generating more jobs in processing, packaging, marketing and transportation.

Greece has the largest fleet, with more than 20% of European Community vessels, followed by Italy (19%) and Spain (17.5%).

THE COMMON FISHERIES POLICY - THE BUSTED FLUSH

I quote from Debating Europe - “CFP was supposed to protect fish stocks without killing fishing communities. It has failed on both counts. Despite 42 years of the CFP, three out of four of the major commercial stocks are overfished, while the EU fleet is still at least double the sustainable level. Without change, 90 percent of stocks will reach unsustainable levels within 10 years. Quota hopping within the EU enables big commercial fisheries from countries like Spain and Denmark to grab the others stocks. The quota system favours big industrial trawlers while penalizing small, sustainable inshore fishing communities who are denied quotas.”

Rory Broomfield reported  -There was study in 2010 by the University of York and the Marine Conservation Society. It found that in England and Wales, 19th century fishermen were landing four times as much as today. And in 1937, at the peak of the UK's fishing industry, the catch was 14 times what it is now. This study  by Ruth Thurstan, Simon Brockington and Callum Roberts, illustrate that the UK fishing industry has been in dramatic decline, and that the UK's modern fishermen must work 17 times harder for the same catch as their sail-powered Victorian counterparts. It states, worryingly, that the availability of bottom-living fish having fallen by 94 percent.  In contrast, Norway is now the world's second largest seafood exporter  – Europe's largest – and produces the equivalent of 25 million meals world-wide. Being able to control its seabed has allowed the Norwegians to produce over 600,000 tonnes of farmed fish and shellfish each year, employ 30,000 people in the industry – 14,000 of whom work in fishing – and effectively double the export value of fish to over £3.5 billion per year.

THE SPANISH ARMADA IN THE 21st CENTURY

My own experience of the fishing industry was gained in Newfoundland for over a decade in the 1970s where I was Fleet Operations Manager. My boss, Gus Etchegary, the President of Fishery Products, gave an address to Convocation in June, 2008. This is an extract from that event, it is so relevant to the crisis we now face in the fishing industry of the United Kingdom :

“This series of events has had a major impact on the economic and social lives of the people in Newfoundland & Labrador since 1949.

When we entered Confederation, Ottawa, under the Terms of Union took over management responsibility of our fisheries and did so largely for the purpose of jurisdiction and the application of regulatory measures and enforcement regimes. Our fishery at that time was so large, important and valuable that it actually elevated Canada from 14th to 6th place as a world fish-exporting nation. Because of its size and diversity of this great resource, it attracted that newly-constructed fishing armada from war-torn Europe and by 1960, 11 years after Confederation, there were over a thousand trawlers and 50,000 men from Western European and East-Bloc countries were fishing off the Coast of Newfoundland and Labrador and the Grand Banks. Unfortunately for N&L, they were allowed to fish in an uncontrolled and unrestricted fashion from Labrador to the Grand Banks to the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

It’s very important to understand here, most people don’t, that foreign overfishing, that we faced for over 40 years, the failure of NAFO and Canada’s failure to manage our fisheries affects N&L only it does not have any impact on the Maritime Provinces fishing industry. This accounts for the fact that we have been alone in our battle trying to get something done about overfishing a problem since 1978.

Extension of jurisdiction, in 1978, by Canada to two hundred miles came far too late and did not provide protection for migrating fish stocks since it did not encompass the total Continental Shelf. Renowned DFO scientist very well know here at MUN, Dr. Wilfred Templeman, and many others, had publicly warned the Trudeau Govt. in 1971 that our fisheries were already at that time in sharp decline and effective conservation measures were essential to halt the massacre. Ottawa paid no attention to these warnings and mismanagement of the diminishing resource continued for the next twenty years until it finally collapsed in 1992. Then the Federal Govt. announced a two-year moratorium to give the resource a rest, but it applied only to Canadian fishermen with foreign fishing nations continuing their destructive fishing practices on the Grand Banks by the way, those destructive practices are as prevalent today as then and don’t let DFO’s propaganda, through its Communication Branch, try to convince you otherwise.”

Greenpeace produced a report in 2010, for me this report is plus c'est la même chose because you will note that Gus Etchegary refers to an “armada” in his speech - the majority of the vessels that he was referring to were Spanish trawlers. Here is an extract from that report :

Despite its many reforms, the CFP has failed to ensure sustainable and profitable fisheries. This is largely the result of political decision-making that favours the short-term, economic interests of the fishing industry over science-based governance and sustainability. It is also a consequence of the fact that EU governments have failed to meet agreed objectives for the protection of marine species and habitats and the establishment of a network of marine reserves. Responsible are the governments of the 27 EU states. The EU’s most dominant fishing nation, Spain, is also one of the most politically powerful in terms of influencing fisheries decisions. Spain’s government oversees a fishing industry that:

■ Controls the largest fishing fleet in the EU in terms of so-called gross tonnage (GT) - a quarter of the EU total, more than twice the size of the entire UK fleet, which is the second largest fleet in the EU, three times the Dutch and more than 10 times the Swedish fleet.

■ Receives almost 50% of the EU’s fisheries subsidies, four times more than the next largest recipient, Italy, five times more than France and almost 10 times more than the subsidies that the UK received.

■ Uses around a quarter of its subsidies to grow and modernise its fleet, which in terms of vessel construction is three times more than all other countries combined.

■ Includes a number of notorious (pirate) fishing vessels, some of which fished in prohibited areas, hid catch information and targeted protected fish species.

■ Operates some of the largest and most powerful vessels in the world – Spain’s 12 largest vessels have a combined gross tonnage that is larger than that of the entire Swedish fishing fleet. If you were to line up all Spanish fishing vessels, bow to stern, they would stretch for a distance of 123 kilometres. Their reach and destructive impact, however, is global. This report illustrates the scale and impact of the Spanish fleet and reveals that the development of excessive and destructive fishing practices are in fact politically and financially supported by the Spanish government.

THE LOOMING CRISIS

In general, people in developing countries and especially those in coastal areas are much more dependent on fish as a staple food than those in the developed world so Spain’s assault on West African fish stocks is criminal. I have received anecdotal reports from Ghana that this is indeed happening. The EU has done nothing about it and, in fact, has had the temerity to penalise some Third World countries for letting it happen!

The reformed EU Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) that entered into force in 2014  was supposed to lay the foundations that could eventually lead to sustainable management of fish stocks in Europe. The CFP aims to restore and maintain populations above levels capable of producing the maximum sustainable yield. The MSY exploitation rate is to be achieved by 2015 where possible and by 2020 at the latest for all stocks. Following scientific advice is essential to achieving this goal. But unfortunately this will not be the case in 2015 because fishing limits have been set above scientific advice for several fish stocks. So we are heading for a East Coast Canadian scenario - an ecological disaster - unless fishing effort conforms to the advice given by scientists.

CONCLUSIONS

It will be apparent to everyone that it would be completely wrong for any Government to allow the current situation in the Fishing Industry to continue i.e death and destruction of fisherfolk, fishing vessels, the demise of communities in rural areas of the United Kingdom. It would be completely wrong for any Government to allow the collapse of any resource to the point of extinction. It would be completely wrong for any Government to close its eyes to rape of the fishing resources of African nations and other Third World countries.

The EU has had countless opportunities to address the latter two points but failed.

The only recourse is to leave the EU and do what Iceland and Greenland have done and reclaim the EEZ of the United Kingdom. What then? In my view the answer is to found in the following document :

Options for Allocation of Fish Quota in Scotand - June 2014

The definition of RBM adopted for one study was "any system of allocating fishing rights to fishers, fishing vessels, enterprises, cooperatives or fishing communities". The main types of market like instruments are: limited non-transferable licensing (LL); limited transferable licensing (LTL); community catch quotas (CQ); individual non-transferable effort quotas (IE); individual transferable effort quotas (ITE); individual non-transferable catch quotas (IQ] vessel catch limits (VC); individual transferable quotas (ITQ) and territorial use rights in fisheries (TURF). This mirrors the OECD classification.

This would allow the UK to evaluate that system that would provide the best for the British Isles but it cannot do it within the EU

Finally,  the question of safety - in my view if we regain contol of the resource then the fishing enterprise has to conform to all that is required of being safe to hold the license. The fishing enterprise has to live in a culture of safety of fishermen and its environment or be denied that right.

Captain Mike Hogan