Thursday 21 July 2016

Notice of the Meeting of Fisheries Local Action Group



Notice of the Meeting of Fisheries Local Action Group 2(FLAG2) to be held at 2.00pm, on Wednesday, 27 July, 2016, at the CDC Offices, Station Road, South Wheal Crofty,

Pool, Redruth, TR15 3QG

A G E N D A

1. Welcome and Apologies

2. European Maritime and Fisheries Fund (EMFF)

3. Local Development Strategy (LDS)

4. Any Other Business

5. Date of Next Meeting

Monday 18 July 2016

Monday morning's market in Newlyn - it's a blue kind of day.


Big inshore trawler landings and just the one beam trawler landings for this morning...



including these cracking monk tails from New Harmony...


certain to fetch a good price on a slack flats market...


these Dover soles will make good money...


and so will these spotty plaice...


while the handful of John Dory will go for top dollar when in short supply...


one grey, one red...


maybe the landing obligation will see the end of landing monk ails, so here is a box of heads, minus cheeks...


to compliment Jeremy's cracking shot of ray...


while the Millenia happened upon a handful of red mullet...


all round the Bay small boats cheered as mackerel finally decided...


to put in an appearance over the weekend...


with so much mackerel strong arms are needed...


though some of the merchants...


and the auctioneer Ian all had their eyes on a cracking landing of hake from the...


Karen of Ladram including this 8 kg fish...


and his cousin seen here balancing on his nose...


always a scary fish - the giant weaver...


and a giant monk...


and of course one of the fastest fish in the west...


almost level-pegging between the Ivan Ellen and the Paul Alexander in the rescue stakes...


always tempting to play around with a few of the images when there is no wind...


in the harbour, and a chance to create Newlyn's very own versions...


of Mandlebrot images...


on such a stunning morning...


one of those days when being a fisherman, heading for home, has no equal...


along the promenade the Jubilee pool...


basks in the morning sun...


along with a fleet of big blue boats in Penzance wet dock.

Newlyn Raft Race - get a team together!

Calling all lady sailors - get a team together to beat the Meadery Maids!

Meadery Maids - the ones to beat!
Organisers are calling for teams to sign up for the annual Newlyn Raft Race to be held later this month. The event, which raises money for Newlyn Harbour's Christmas lights, will be held at Newlyn Green on July 31, starting at noon.

Organiser Marcia Bell said: "It's usually a very successful day and it's lots of fun with the raft race itself." Every year, women's teams try to beat the long-lived, the Meadery girls."

This year, will see the fire brigade versus the Penlee lifeboat!

BREXIT, ENGOs & THE FISHING INDUSTRY

Assistant chief executive, Dale Rodmell, reflects on Brexit, the disconnect between industry and the Common Fisheries Policy and the influence and role of environmental NGOs.

Fishing became the political poster child for the Brexit campaign. It's easy to see why. More than in any other area of EU policy, the story of fisheries epitomises a sense of lost control and real loss as our industry bore the brunt of year after year of cuts at the hands of a distant invisible bureaucracy the industry gave the impression that it was oblivious to the livelihood needs of fishing communities. Changes to improve things to better connect industry to policy have also seemed slow and insufficient. In order to better understand the issues we now face following the Brexit vote it is worth examining the history of involvement of the fishing industry in the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) and in more recent times the emergence of environmental NGOs as a significant influence.

The CFP Disconnect

Up until 2004 the only direct engagement the industry had with the CFP machinery was through the Advisory Committee for Fisheries and Aquaculture (ACFA), a forum of industry and representatives of fish workers that advised the Commission across the whole spectrum of European fisheries. As a single forum that only met occasionally it was grossly inadequate for the task of covering the whole spectrum of European fisheries. The Regional Advisory Councils (now Advisory Councils) were first launched in 2004

The first efforts to change this state of affairs followed the crises of the 1990s that saw drastic cuts to whitefish quotas and to the fleet. From the discontent that was generated the 2002 CFP reform saw the introduction of the Regional Advisory Councils (now Advisory Councils). These were much more significant forums with secretariats to support their work and they gave the industry a much more robust platform at a more appropriate scale to influence management decisions, alongside other stakeholders. But the Advisory Councils were not the be all and end all. Advice is just that. It has no direct role in setting management objectives and operational rules. There was wide recognition that involvement still needed to be deepened further.

The opportunity for that came with the regionalisation agenda under the latest reform. At the start of the process the Commission, in its Green Paper of 2009, had started out accepting that there was still something wrong with the relationship between fisheries governance under the CFP and industry. It said that:

"Very little can be achieved if the forthcoming reform fails to motivate the catching sector, the processing and seafood chain as well as consumers to support the objectives of the policy and take responsibility for implementing them effectively. It is critical to the success of reform that industry should understand the need for it, support it and have a genuine stake in its successful outcome. In a mostly top-down approach, which has been the case under the CFP so far, the fishing industry has been given few incentives to behave as a responsible actor accountable for the sustainable use of a public resource. Co-management arrangements could be developed to reverse this situation." (CFP Reform Green Paper, 2009)

Almost as soon as it was printed, however, this whole agenda was all about to be side-lined. In contrast to what the Commission technocrats were thinking, Commissioner Damanaki had spent her time in office either aloof or hostile to industry. The European Parliament with its newly established powers under the Lisbon Treaty had little affinity for grand ideas of delegating responsibility to others when it had just been given responsibility itself. That, combined with the vast majority of MEPs having an almost complete absence of knowledge of the fishing industry, but their ears open to anyone who would tell them what to think, set the stage for the next command and controllers charter that we now see in the current CFP.

How did it turn out that way? Enter the eNGOs. Many newly self-appointed as the guardians of our marine resources and ready to fight on the beaches with a war chest mostly convoyed over from the USA. They got to work firstly with a doom-mongers blitz. Despite ongoing progress with cutting fishing mortality and the start of recovery being seen across the NE Atlantic stocks, according to them stocks were in free fall and heading for extinction - remember the 100 cod left in the North Sea story, and the 2048 end of line hype? In this altered reality, the inference was that industry couldn't be trusted with the public's precious natural resources. They had pillaged them, and always hoodwinked their politicians into agreeing short-termist decisions, right? And there was an urgency to put it all right, if not by 2015, then by 2020 at the latest, no exceptions. Accompanying this narrative was heavy lobbying of the European Parliament to introduce a strict set of regulation to be contained in the core legislation, providing little flexibility for application at the regional level (see figure below).

Then, in the midst of it all, along came one of our celebrity campaigning chefs to lob in a discards PR hand grenade, straight into Commissioner Damanaki's lap. It didn't matter that a lot of the discards were generated by the regulations themselves and that significant progress had already been made to reduce them. In a matter of weeks the industry was handed it back, in-kind; the obligation to (nearly) not throw a single fish over the side...whilst trying to do a circus act to remain within the constraints of all of the other regulations. Actually, the circus act was left for another day - too hard for the hard working legislators to think about at that time. The megalomaniacs were back in charge, and once the deal was signed, congratulating themselves on the fantastic job they had done.

Creating the next command and controller's charter: Left, MEP's eNGO crib sheet during the Parliament vote in 2013. Right, an explanation of what the amendments mean in practice. The first two were adopted in the final reform.

Indeed, a number of them still believe it and continue to press for the toughest interpretation of the reform text. They continue to try to persuade decision-makers that the scientists have it wrong over setting stock biomass levels consistent with sustainable yields. They continue to lambast Ministers for TAC decisions that are different from the single stock advice without acknowledging their role in a legitimate process to consider, beyond this advice, balancing the pace of reaching MSY with mixed fishery considerations and the likelihood of generating large quantities of discards. And they are working to try to set up a police state of electronic monitoring to hold the whole thing together.

Shared Objectives, Wrong-headed Delivery

To be clear, the NFFO has not been against the policy objectives of the CFP. Maximising long-term yields is a good thing, as is minimising discards. But fisheries management can't sit in an ivory tower and hand down these objectives as prescriptive management regulations attached with "plucked out of the sky" non-negotiable deadlines without an appreciation of how to deliver at sea and manage change, whilst maintaining viable businesses. Tighter management has thus come along just when we have been witnessing of stock recovery on the grounds. Maximum Sustainable Yield (MSY) targets have delayed increases to quotas. Across fisheries that had received severe cuts the evidence base which is dependent upon the operating fisheries themselves, has also been undermined resulting in the increased application of the precautionary approach, which leads to reduced quotas simply due to lack of knowledge on stock status. New stocks such as skates and rays have been placed on quota but again with limited evidence, they too have been subject to successive cuts as a consequence of the precautionary approach. All of these situations have led to more instances where fishing opportunities are out of sync with stock abundance. Add the landing obligation (discard ban) to all of this and we are heading for a crunch as the responsibility for the mismatch between available quota and abundance is transferred to the fishing business with the expectation that they can somehow perform the circus act and avoid breaking the law. And if they can't, they tie up and go bust. That's the prospect of what so-called "choke" stocks mean when the available quota of one stock has been used up but the stock can't be avoided and so fishing for other species has to stop.

eNGOs and Brexit

The Brexit vote demonstrated in spectacular fashion that keeping those who are affected by decisions remote from decision-making and marginalised from the agenda, that politics can and does come back to bite. Of course, fisheries were part of a much wider leave narrative over governance, identity, democracy and exclusion, but it was used graphically in the Leave campaign to make the point.

In the wake of the vote, there is likely to be a lot of soul-searching in the EU about how to better connect the supra-national institutions to national populations. But the influence of eNGOs that was prominently visible in the latest CFP reform, and their habit of lobbying for top-down command and control environmental policy from the centre, hasn't gone away with the vote. eNGOs are not accountable to the electorate. And in Europe, the UK probably has an eNGO community that is more active than in any other nation.

eNGOs didn't want Brexit. A large amount of environmental policy is attached in some way to EU governance, and as some have argued in our EU referendum blog, fisheries and other environmental issues go beyond the reach of single countries. But already some are calling on the UK government to be tough on regulation and others are seeking to disenfranchise our industry by claiming that we fail to understand sustainability and the conservation of natural resources upon which our industry depends.

Rubbish. A cursory glance at our website and the work we are involved in will prove that is not the case. Such an assertion reflects just the sort of attitude of blaming the people for their lot and trying to marginalise them from decision-making that is the cause of political ruction, certainly not a solution to it. Such eNGOs should hold a mirror up to themselves about what the vote represented. I appreciate, nonetheless, that so far in talking about eNGOs I am lumping together a great number of organisations and stereotyping them as one. That is unfair. Not all are concerned with implementing legalistic regulatory frameworks from the centre and not all work to demonize and control the fishing industry without having anything to do with it. Indeed, some have a more collaborative side. The Advisory Councils have been pioneering in bringing eNGOs together with industry. In the fruits of the consensus-based advice that they produce, they demonstrate what is possible.

Working in Partnership

There is also a growing number who are beginning to work directly to support industry. We in the industry need to foster these relationships, whilst continuing to call out those who would rather work in the shadows and transmit falsehoods about our industry, ferment division and continue to pedal the doom-mongers narrative in order to justify their next grant or charitable donation.

There is a lot to do that could be achieved working in partnership. We must strive to improve the ability of industry to generate its own evidence to be able to help to plug the gaps in our fisheries knowledge base. We need to press ahead with management approaches that incentivise industry, undertaking trials and ensure that what works is adopted more widely. We need to create a policy environment where fisheries management is not all about compliance with the rules, it is about shared objectives, shared management, and mutual buy-in. We must show how that is a different and a better way to the centralising tendencies of top-down control.

What Next?

There are many governance models for our fisheries that may materialise post-Brexit. There is nothing to say that one or other of the possibilities would not be some form of top-down control. Like any system of governance, when the pieces are thrown in the air they can so easily land with all the power greedily held at the centre or result with powerful lobbies dictating the terms. We will, of course, be working to see that whatever model it is, it is inclusive of the industry. I'll close with a prediction. Fisheries will continue along the path to recovery and at some point the doom-mongers' currency about our industry, like the boy who cried wolf, will be worthless. Those eNGOs that stick to it will either wither or go onto something else. The surviving ones still working in fisheries will be the ones that are actually supporting industry to sustainably manage its own affairs and celebrating what is possible. Bring on the optimists.

Full story courtesy of the NFFO website.

Fine weather allows AIS to pick up a 21m Spanish pole and line tuna boat off deep Cornwall!



VesselTracker's AIS picked up the 21m Spanish pole and line tuna boat 450 miles WSW of Land's End this morning. No doubt there are a number of other Spanish and French tuna boats all searching for tuna in the area.  Normally small boats are not picked up by AIS more than 50 miles from the nearest receiver - but in exceptional weather - no wind, a flat sea and fog - AIS can pick boats up over hundreds of miles away!..


The boat is about 180 miles west of the edge of the continental shelf where the bottom in well in excess of 2000 fathoms.

Sunday 17 July 2016

ENGOs and Foundations next attempt to halt fishing - Déjà vu all over again

Back in 2002, when various groups and people had figured out that the creation of things called marine protected areas (MPAs) could be sold politically as a mechanism for “saving the oceans,” the people at the Pew Charitable Trusts and the Conservation Law Foundation hired a marketing firm, Edge Research, to demonstrate that New Englanders and Maritime Canadians would be firmly behind using them to put even more fishermen out of work. They used what they termed “public opinion polling” to demonstrate this. I devoted a couple of thousand words to a critique on this exercise, and that FishNet is available at http://www.fishingnj.org/netusa21.htm

Replies from Sara Clark Stuart at the Conservation Law Foundation and from Lisa Dropkin at Edge Research (to which I added additional comments) are at http://www.AnnotatedDropkinMemo.pdf.

Well, borrowing from a line made popular by the late Heather O’Rourke in the movie Poltergeist II, they’re back! Only this time they’re trying to convince the Obama White House that two areas off the New England coast are deserving of protection in perpetuity by being designated as National Monuments. Needless to say, their campaign to do this comes with the to be expected major PR campaign, getting as much mileage as possible from what appears to be saturation-level social media manipulation and another Edge Research “strategic marketing survey.”

One of the more clever things in this most recent bout of “market research” was the lumping of mining, drilling and fishing together. This seems to me to be tantamount to asking people how they feel about crimes committed by “murderers, rapists and shop lifters.” After the recent (and very possibly still ongoing) BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico we all have a pretty accurate idea of what the potential downsides are to drilling in the oceans, and who hasn’t seen pictures of huge open pit mines (if you are one of the few who hasn’t, Google “open pit mine” and click on images)? Not in our ocean, huh?

But can anyone make a rational connection between mining, drilling and fishing? Is there any comparison between the gross negligence practiced by our federal regulators and the offshore oil industry and a fleet of fishing boats working sustainably to provide our consumers with healthful seafood? Can tearing down mountains and creating holes that rival the Grand Canyon be equated with the “damage” done by hooks and nets? Not in the real world, for sure. But in the fantasy ocean world that mega-foundation millions are being spent to create there’s apparently no difference – or the people who have been bought by those foundation’s millions want everyone to believe there isn’t.

In a memo presenting their survey results and their conclusions the people at Edge Research write “while there is currently no drilling and mining in these areas, there is some commercial fishing activity. Protecting these areas would prohibit the fishing activity in these limited areas and could result in a small adverse economic impact on commercial fishing.” It’s axiomatic but it probably doesn’t hurt to state that what is “a small adverse economic impact” to the people at Edge Research, at Pew, at the Conservation Law Foundation or at any of the other involved organizations who can with clear conscience equate the impacts of fishing with the impacts of mining and drilling is unquestionably the difference between staying in business and bankruptcy to dozens of small New England businesses. But the drillers will keep on drilling and the miners will keep on digging, just like always.

Do you want the fisheries that you depend on to be controlled by politically spawned dictates from the White House or by a science-based system that is based on input from you and other stakeholders? Do you want federal fisheries policy to be a result of manipulations by professional pollsters working for anti-fishing ENGOs and the foundations that support them?

This isn't just a New England problem. This allows any anti-fishing group with enough dollars and enough political clout to ride roughshod over a fisheries management that, while not yet perfect is something that we've all invested a tremendous in imporoving. Below I've attached an email from the National Coalition of Fisshing Communities addressing this issue as well. New York Congressman Lee Zeldin has prepared legislation that, while not a permanent fix, will put the Foundations/ENGOs plans on ice for a year. This will allow us time to work on a permanent solution. I don't know this fared last night but regardless of that call your local House Member's and your Senators' offices and let them know how important this issue is to you and to your future in fishing.

Article courtesy of Nils Stolpe FishNet USA