David Levy – Fisheries reform, or a new way of thinking? Time to make your choice – Dec 14
Latest reviews from Greenpeace, The New Economics Foundation and PEW Trusts (to name a few marine NGOs) reveal a shocking betrayal to the British and European peoples.
The reform of the Common Fisheries Policy promised that fish catches would no more exceed scientific advice. Further, in the European fleet monitoring would be installed on all vessels, and enforcement delivered by the European Maritime and Fisheries Fund (EMFF) Subsidies.
What past histories have demonstrated is that none of these would be delivered.
Recent decisions for Baltic and Atlantic waters by European Ministers have total allowable catches (TACs) of major fish stocks going beyond scientific advice. What’s more, UK quotas which should be a clearly guarded national resource, are traded with foreign companies who now own large percentages of our national quota. As for monitoring, CCTV and SATNAV are not fitted. Indeed, there’s no central or organised authority to measure landings, or what goes on during catches and where they take place.
Just more anarchy at sea, and all reforms are paper tigers; and, the new CFP — Toothless.
Marinet warned anybody who would listen that this would happen and it gives no pleasure to see our warnings are coming true.
Ministers can and do override the science and reform measures, backed up by an out-of-control fishing industry. The industry will never change nor accept that their practices will drive fish stocks to collapse. Meanwhile, that is exactly what is happening on a daily basis in European waters, and wild sea bass are near the end.
When our governments and the powers to be (EU, UK, Scottish and the industry itself) are instigating our own marine collapse, what can you believe in?
The more the evidence is gathered in, the more I believe we cannot trust in the system.
That just leaves a new way of thinking, and the system needs to change with a different mind-set, backed up by enforcement and a new Law of the Sea. Read Conserving The Great Blue. It is something we should all get behind.
