Re: Hugh’s Fish Fight
The extremely biased and negative view of scallop fishing portrayed last week on C4 Hugh’s Fish Fight displayed a total lack of responsibility on the part of Hugh Fearnely-Whittingstall.
Having been educated at Oxford University before becoming a freelance commercial journalist, surely he should be aware of the need to inform the public by presenting balanced facts, rather than trying to indoctrinate them with extremely one-sided and distorted personal opinions.
Whilst trying to provide first-hand and well-informed articles/features for Fishing News for more than 25 years, I have had the opportunity to spend considerable time on a variety of vessels fishing scallops (as well as fisheries compliance vessels) in a number of areas around the UK, including the English Channel, Irish Sea, Isle of Man, west coast of Scotland/Outer Hebrides, Orkney and Shetland.
This experience has also encompassed going on sea-trials for new scallop vessels, the building of which provides valuable employment continuity for both boatyards and equipment/gear suppliers. If the seabed around Britain were as barren and desert-like as Hugh Fearnely-Whittingstall conveniently portrays them to be, does he really think that bank managers would enable a skipper/owner to take on the level of long-term financial commitment required to build a new boat?
Equally, if scallop fishing damages the seabed to the extent Hugh Fearnely-Whittingstall claims, then how does he explain the fact that some of the best scallop catches continue to be taken from grounds that have been fished for over 40 years?
The creation of loose sand sculptures decorated with pseudo sea growth, before promptly removing them with scallop and beam trawl gear towed horizontally by tractors on dry land on a sunny summer’s day, was a very cheap publicity stunt which, in the eyes of many, went a long way towards undermining much of Hugh Fearnley-Whittinstall’s credibility.
So too did the suggestion early in the programme that the CFP was being reformed as a result of his efforts. This is a total insult to the thousands of fishermen who have endured years of self-sacrifice in order to achieve long overdue reform of the CFP, as well as the unstinting efforts of equally committed association leaders and politicians.
The UK fishing industry continues to lead from the front in terms of implementing new initiatives that are already proving highly effective in ensuring the long-term sustainability of both fishermen and the stocks on which they are reliant.
Why was the fact that, within the last 12 months the Shetland scallop fishery has been awarded MSC accreditation, not worth a mention?
An extremely wide raft of finely tuned management rules and technical gear measures are in place across all fisheries, but again viewers were not given an opportunity to evaluate these facts for themselves.
Neither were they made aware of the fact that Faroese midwater trawlers, shown at the beginning of Hugh’s Fish Fight (together with Icelandic vessels), are overfishing the mackerel stock by 300,000t, with the result that the MSC accreditation achieved by Scotland. Ireland and other EU countries, together with Norway in view of their well-managed and sustainable fishery, is currently suspended.
Will this oversight be corrected in the remaining two episodes?
David Linkie - at the Fishing News