Super-trawlers are feeding on EU fishing subsidies

This Op-Ed first appeared in The Australian 24 Sept 2012
 
In banning supertrawlers from our waters for two years, the Australian Government has sent a strong message to the bloated and subsidised European fishing industry. Fishing in Europe is governed by the EU’s law on fishing, known as the Common Fisheries Policy. It has been a thirty year debacle of failed intervention by Brussels. The noble theory behind the CFP was to manage Europe’s fisheries in a fair and profitable way. But the reality has been a fiasco.

In one official paper, the EU described the CFP as “characterised by overfishing, fleet overcapacity, heavy subsidies, low economic resilience and a decline in the volume of fish caught by European fishermen”. The proof of the CFP’s dismal failure is in the water. According to the EU’s own grim scientific estimates, three quarters of the continent’s fish stocks are overfished.

The principal cause of Europe’s collapsing fish stocks is overcapacity. The EU fleet is simply too big. According to the European Commission, the EU fleet catches two to three times more fish than is sustainable within the continent’s waters. The problem then gets exported, with EU boats ending up in the waters of some of the poorest countries in the world, sending local fish stocks downhill.

Perversely, underpinning the overcapacity are massive EU subsidies, totalling well over one billion euros per year. In 2011, the EU Court of Financial Auditors produced a damning report, which noted that the multi-billion euro European Fisheries Fund designed to balance fishing activities at sustainable levels was actually doing the reverse. Grotesquely, European taxpayers are effectively paying fishermen to destroy the continent’s natural capital.

The EU state that benefits the most from subsidies is Spain – but the Dutch have also got in on the act. Parlevliet & Van der Plas, the company behind the super trawler at the centre of the recent controversy has been heavily favoured, receiving direct and indirect subsidies of more than €55 million in the last two decades. Subsidies appear critical to the business model of Parlevliet. Without subsidies, the firm may have even lost money in recent years.

  According to the European Commission, between 30% and 40% of EU fishing fleet have negative long-term profitability, meaning that their income is not enough to cover all their expenses. The broader industry group to which Parlevliet belongs – the Pelagic Freezer-trawler Association representing some of the EU’s biggest distant water boats – would struggle to be profitable without subsidies.

  Not all fisheries subsidies are bad. The WTO’s proposed disciplines on fisheries subsidies, for example, would still allow flexibilities for subsistence-type fishing in territorial waters. Administered appropriately, subsidies can also be an effective instrument in drawing down overcapacity. But at their worst subsidies hide and promote economic inefficiencies, lead to unsustainable fishing and distort politics. In Europe it is no surprise that countries and companies that have most feasted from the subsidies trough are among those that are most tenaciously opposing effective reform of the CFP.

In its 2008 Report, Sunken Billions: The Economic Justification for Fisheries Reform, the World Bank found the global marine capture fisheries sector to be an underperforming global asset with the difference between the potential and actual net economic benefits in the order of $50 billion per year. The Bank pointed to bad fisheries subsidies as being a big part of the problem and the EU is among the worst offenders.

The administration of the CFP subsidy system has also been associated with organised crime, undue influence and just plain incompetence. One study highlighted a number of instances where millions of euros were paid for ‘vessel modernisation’ and then more money was given for the same vessels to be scrapped a short time later.

European fishing overcapacity needs to be reduced and it makes economic, environmental and social sense to start with massive boats like the supertrawlers. As the United Nations Environment Programme has said, ‘given the wide difference in the catching power, the job creation potential, and the livelihood implications of large-scale versus small-scale fishing vessels, it appears that a reduction effort focused on large-scale vessels could reduce overcapacity at lower socio-economic costs to society.’

Progressive forces within the EU are currently trying to reform the CFP. The EU fisheries Commissioner Maria Damanaki has spoken repeatedly of the need for urgent reform as has the UK’s Conservative Fisheries Minister, Richard Benyon. Ranged against the subsidised vested interests, these reformers need all the help they can get.

David Ritter is the Chief Executive Officer of Greenpeace Australia Pacific.

Follow him on Twitter : View his full profile here.

Monday's market

Plenty of fine fish on the market this morning, luscious lemons from the Sapphire...

delicious Dorys from the Elisabeth Veronique...

and some more of those rare adult cod...

a feast of #hake from the netter Sparkling Line and the Govenek of Ladram...

filled the western end of the market...

super squid...

an example of the box problem - not so unique for Newlyn - boxes here from Ireland, France, Holland and Belgium as well as individual boats and markets...

a good shot of line caught fish from the St Ives cat, Bethshan...

good run of red gurnards from the inshore boats...

best off out of the weather for the beamer Louisa N...

latest wind farm technology to pass through the port, a 24m alloy South Cat...

just picked out sailing through the gaps at first light...

the crabber, Emma Louise...

watched closely by Tom...

the day breaks over the bowling green.

Sunday supper

Accompanying the dish, wilted home-grown cavalo-nero - one of the few success stories from the garden this summer! - with a few cloves of chopped garlic and olly oil...

a slight variation on a dish from Mitch Tonks' Fish Easy - with the tarragon fresh from the garden...

the accompanying pasta dish, using mushroom fried in olly oil and a dash of butter till golden alternating with a layer of the wilted greens (could use spinach)...

the skinned Dover sole oiled and ready for an oven grilling, the dressing...

a mix of tarragon, butter and a few dabs of gentleman's relish (no anchovies in the cupboard - an excellent substitute)...

gets poured over the fish as a garnish straight out of the oven - the Dory sneaked in as an afterthought!

Saturday morning

Shore break surfers take to the air...

now's the chance to be the next Helen Glover...

nothing so fine...

mallard pet...

for this classic Scandinavian yacht...

solar power and gull deterrent.

SS276 bound in...

the ILB is running away with this year's tally of rescues #rnli...

bound out...

wind in the South...

and sun high in the sky...

this weekend's deals at Newlyn...

now that the Mission is no longer open for business on a Saturday Morning the Harbour Cafe is busy enough...

hot story for the week

has generated much debate #cefas #sundaytimes.

Fishing grounds, SPAs, SACs, MCZs, Oil Exploration, Wind Farms, Fishery Regulations......= The Big Squeeze!

The map above is taken from the ArcGIS web site which hosts a multilyared chart of the waters around the UK and bordering other Eurpoean fishing countries like France, Belgium, Denmark and Holland. 

The key to the colour coded areas is below and the data layers include:

-          oil exploration and exploitation (purple and sand color + blue points)

-          offshore wind (red – no fishing inside for UK side)

-          Natura 2000 (SPA and SAC) existing and proposed + MCZ + Marine parcs : brown (proposition) and blue (existing)

-          Some special areas regarding protection of vulnerable marine ecosystem and fishery regulation (still incomplete). (lines without colour filling

This “all data map” can be split it in several submaps with less layers.

European rich traditional fishing area will be under pressure. See Dogger Bank with the size of the offshore wind area…!

A closer look at the south west reveals the extent of the areas now covered by the above interests.....

which in the Channel and North Sea begin to look a little crowded - a live version of this map -  Seas and fishermen, new zone management - is available on the ArcGIS web site here.

Cefas - Setting the record straight on mature North Sea cod

More good news! - In the wake of Defra's reiteration and affirmation that there are no adult cod left in the North Sea, Cefas have released an official response to the article that first appeared in the Sunday Times last weekend.

 

Adult cod on Newlyn fish auction this morning!

An article in last weekend's Sunday Times (16 September 2012) incorrectly claimed that "fewer than 100 mature cod are left in the North Sea". Such a statement is wrong even though the cod stock does remain severely depleted.

The briefing Cefas gave the Sunday Times journalist about the recovering North Sea cod stock and the positive news about haddock, saithe and plaice at high stock sizes and reasonable levels of exploitation (fishing) were omitted in the final article.

Cefas and other European scientific institutions work together at the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) to monitor and assess the biomass (tonnage) of North Sea cod and other commercial species.
For North Sea cod, it is correct that the international fishing rate (mortality) has been high since the 1980s, and has shown a decline since 2000. The number of young cod (recruitment) has been low since 1987, and even lower since 1998, causing serious concern.

The latest ICES' assessment shows that there has been a gradual improvement in the status of the stock over the last few years. The amount of mature fish (spawning stock biomass) has increased from the historical low in 2006 and shows signs of further improvement.

This has been achieved through the collaboration of fishermen and scientists working together to gain better and more robust scientific evidence upon which to make fisheries management decisions.

The Fisheries Science Partnership and discard-reduction programmes like Project 50%, alongside catch-quota trials run in collaboration with the Marine Management Organisation, have done much to help inform the scientific evidence base and to deliver more sustainable fisheries.

Confusion was inevitable when the Sunday Timesattempted to condense complex fish stock information on the back of their request for a briefing about the New Economics Foundation's latest report (see http://www.neweconomics.org/nocatchinvestment).

19 September 2012

Where is Poirot?- The Case of the Missing Boxes

Replacing lost boxes is costing thousands Thursday, September 20, 2012The CornishmanFollow NEWLYN Harbour Commission says it is having to spend tens of thousands of pounds a year replacing fish boxes which could be better spent elsewhere in the port. 

The port authority spent £10,000 in the first quarter of 2012 on the boxes it provides to fisherman to display and sell their catch in market. ​ Replacing lost fish boxes at Newlyn market, like the ones pictured above, cost the harbour commission £10,000 in the first quarter of the year alone. • • 

Harbour master Andrew Munson said the commission's stock had fallen so low at points that demand had outstripped the number available in the market for use. "The fisherman might take a feed of fish home themselves and forget to take that back," he said. "Merchants take stock of fish away in the boxes; then they don't get returned. "We let them take the fish off the market in boxes under the condition that they bring them back in a clean condition on the same day. I had some come back only yesterday and the bottom of the box said the first week of August. That merchant had our boxes in excess of a month. "This week we ran out of boxes, but I'm lucky I've kept a store for an emergency." 

The problem is one shared by other ports across the country. Plymouth Trawler Agents (PTA) Ltd spends £20,000 to £30,000 a year on new boxes. PTA's Mark Heslop said: "They cost £10 a go; every year that's considerable. The amount we spend on it could employ a couple of people." However, Andy Wheeler from the Cornish Fish Producers' Organisation said the problem was almost unavoidable: "With such a movement of fish up and down the county, over to Brittany and what have you, it's inevitable that they're going to get mixed up. "It's inevitable that if one fisherman gets a certain number of boxes taken, he'll take some. It's an inevitable side-effect of transporting fish. "A lot of fishermen send fish over to Brittany. Some of the boxes get stuck there; sometimes a French fisherman will mistake them for theirs. "They all have a colour code, but I know there are markets in Brittany that have the same colour code."

Missing Box story courtesy of the Cornishman