David Levy – New Year 2021 – Dec 20
The 1200 word document addressing the deal parting our shores from mainland Europe has, as yet, failed to reach the Halls of Marinet’s Wiltshire HQ.
What is known is that the fishing community has had to swallow a new kind of fudge that is not to their taste.
This fudge is not sweet or toffee or anything like acceptable. All of the bonuses that the fishing industry have been expecting are on staggered hold for six years, whilst the European fleets either rape our stocks of fish to the point of collapse or they negotiate how they can buy up that additional quota.
Yes folks, the European fleets actually own and then fish a good percentage of our UK quota at the present time, and do so under flags of convenience. They then land this British quota in foreign ports, for European customers, with profits ending up with overseas companies.
It’s a racket that our own fishing industry has been reluctant to reveal because it is not so fragrant a revelation. Not all of the British fishing industry has been involved. For example the Under-Ten-Metre boats, but they only receive less than 5% of the British quota — yet they have generally given the home market value for money. They fish for crab, scallops, lobsters and other shellfish along with inshore fish species and this catch genuinely goes into home and export markets.
The bonanza that was expected from Brexit was always for the fishing fleets currently holding 95% of the UK quota, enabling them to increase their take or, once again, selling off the increased levels of catch that would have resulted. To say it is a confused state is a real understatement.
The Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) is European Law, signed up to by the UK and still operative. It should have become legally binding by 2020 by when all fish stocks were expected to have reached levels of sustainability, with catch levels referenced against the science of known stocks.
We are now in 2021, and the stock levels remain poor for most species of fish. So we have already breached the law. Despite knowing this legal obligation, our DEFRA Minister has attended annual fish quota meetings and, year on year, the Minister has breached the quota limit when set against scientific advice — as have all other EU countries.
Marinet predicted this outcome from the onset. That is because the MSFD did not set up the management and enforcement regime to deliver its aspirations and, as of this date, not one management plan is in operation.
We stood alone in the DEFRA run MSFD meetings stating what we saw as the blindingly obvious, and we were ridiculed for doing so by the other NGOs at the time. These NGOs were happy sitting at the ‘Government Table’ and being spoken to on first name terms whilst this blind-siding was going on.
It is only today that they are belatedly trying to get a management structure for fisheries — not for all sites, only for the Dogger Bank. If they are waking up to their mission, then they should be doing this for all sites and not just for a token area.
The UK Government is equally responsible for the lawlessness of this industry.
The UK Government’s position is not one of care and accountable management, with a long term plan of a sustainable industry, but rather to still view fishing as a resource that is limitless and can be plundered for evermore.
This insanity is the global story of an industry that postures its historic rights to go on fishing until species are fished to extinction.
Yet like the dinosaur they will never come back, whatever our film industry may say.
David Levy
