It's a fairly #FishyFriday in Newlyn!

Forty shades of orange...

always good to see a boat look after their hauls of whiting - one of the more delicate white fish which do not appreciate being thrown around...

plaice...

and monk tails are a little more resilient

as are lemons...

while mackerel need all the TLC they can get...

as do red mullet, their scales don't stay in place for long after entering the cod end......

John Dory...

and ray rank up their with the toughest of them...

while these beautiful squid, their thin, brown outer membrane intact, reflect they method by which they were caught, one at a time using jigs...

big bold bass often fish in a surf break and are no strangers to fighting for their food...

these pristine monk tails...

sans tête...

Red Bull gives you ray wings so the story goes...

time to sort those megrim soles...

plenty of plaice helped make up the 150 box trip from the beam trawler St Georges...

not a breath of wind overnight, which meant that most of the sardine fleet were back in before midnight with their catches.
 

Cornish Sardines galore at sunrise in Newlyn.

Thankfully for the netting fleet, the falling tide has coincided with a drop in the wind which saw them firing up their main engines before sun up, all hands keen to get away to the fishing grounds off the South Western Approaches.....

the new secure fuel oil and stores compound provides different early morning view of Newlyn, with the light from the waning moon hanging over the town...

as the first three of six sardine boats queue up to land having made a dash in the early hours to take advantage of the weather that settled overnight...

Tom Pascoe, one of the youngest fishermen in the port, pushes down his brail while the next is being emptied ashore from Serene Dawn...

away in the distance the Harvest Reaper heads for the gaps...

as the Golden Harvest lays-to, waiting for a berth alongside the busy fish market quay...

down on the deck of the Asthore...

two brails are also in action putting their morning's wrk ashore...

Dan puts the Golden Harvest gently alongside the market...

as his newest recruit to the crew begins the landing process by adding ice to the 450kg insulated tubs...

before she swings the landing crane with a full brail of sardines over the waiting tub...

Abby represents a small but growing trend of female fishers in the port...

though with nine years already spent at sea crewing for big yachts she already 'knows the ropes' in a way that many new recruits don't...

as the sun permeates light in the harbour...

the next boat, Amanda of Ladram takes ice...

while a Stevenson boxes are delivered ready to be put aboard the next beam trawler...

within a couple of hours the harbour is beginning to empty of boats kept in port for poor weather...

the new security compounds now almost full...

as the last few insulated tubs are being filled full of sardines...

Silver Dawn  skipper Tristan takes the stern line...

so that he can slip the boat out of tier...

and take ice...

as the next sardine boat to land, Lyonesse comes alongside the quay...

the waiting Ocean Fish lorry now almost fully laden with the night's catch of sardines...

with just the first haul for some weeks from the Resolute being landed and caught on film by what looks like cameraman Nathan Harrison...

time for the crew on the Golden Harvest  to head back to her berth...

as the local angling boat Mermaid makes ready for another day at sea to take advantage of what seems like an extended post-lockdown tourist season being enjoyed by businesses in the far west of Cornwall.

 

Fisheries APPG explores how regional initiatives can benefit UK fishing.

 

Last week’s All Party Parliamentary Group on Fisheries webinar was attended by a record number of attendees. Presented by an expert panel, and attended by interested MPs, Peers, and a range of stakeholders from the UK fishing industry, the event explored how regional decision-making was helping to improve fisheries management and the welfare of fishing communities across the country.

A panel representing a diverse range of fisheries initiatives presented case studies that explored the successes and challenges of local decision-making for UK fisheries management. "Our fishing communities and fisheries vary tremendously across the country,” said Sheryll Murray MP, who chaired the event. “Broad management efforts from the government are useful, but are most effective when applied alongside regional initiatives that have a deep understanding of the areas they operate in."

Councillor Tudor Evans OBE, Leader of Plymouth City Council, actively engages with the city’s fishers, and shared some positive experiences from this close collaboration. Plymouth City Council have supported an initiative to increase use of lifejackets and are working with the fishing industry on a plan to build a world-class centre for fishing. “We hope that the models we have created in Plymouth could be utilised by other committees and organisations across the country,” he said.

“Fisheries management can be highly dynamic, and regional decision-making has allowed us to respond quickly to changes in fishing effort and sectoral conflicts” said Tim Smith, Senior Environmental and Scientific Officer for the North Eastern Inshore Fisheries and Conservation Authority (NEIFCA). “Local knowledge and industry research participation have been vital in addressing environmental concerns and the potential impacts of gear conflict.” Tim attributes NEIFCA’s collaborative and consultative approach to helping Yorkshire’s inshore dredge scallop fishery to become sustainable and successful.

Considering whether localised successes could be replicated elsewhere around the UK coast, Chris Williams, Senior Programme Manager at the New Economic Foundation, cautioned, “Future funding should consider the capacity of fishing organisations to apply for funds and ensure that they are given the support they need to apply effectively.” He spoke about working with Graham Doswell and the Eastbourne Quay Project: a fisher-led programme that has overcome challenges brought on by contractors going into administration and the effects of the pandemic. The new Eastbourne fishing quay has now entered the first phase of construction - developing the quay and its facilities for the benefit of the fishermen that use it.

Mike Simmonds, a Fisheries Network Coordinator who has worked at the national and regional level, spoke about how more ‘joined-up’ thinking could help streamline efforts between sectors and national and regional decision-makers for maximum effectiveness. He said that to make effective local decisions, every stage of the supply chain needs to be communicating effectively, and that local authorities and Local Enterprise Partnerships are best placed to determine local fishing industry needs.

APPG on Fisheries parliamentary member Peter Aldous MP shared insights into the work of the Renaissance of the East Anglian Fisheries (REAF), which - through support from all sectors - has developed the UK’s first regional fishing strategy. Their recommendations include investment in a regional fishing port, so it can expand its capacity to accommodate landings and vessel activity. Aldous said that their success can provide a template for similar efforts elsewhere in the UK, but agreed with earlier presenters when he emphasised that bespoke evidence-gathering and regionally-relevant approaches are necessary to ensure success.

Following the presentations, a question and answer session gave attendees from across the UK fisheries sector the opportunity to engage with each other and with Parliamentarians about how local decision-making can support the UK fishing industry.

A recording of this event and a summary of the discussion that took place can be found here, and an accompanying policy brief will also be available in due course. The APPG will hold its next event online on 4 November 2020 on the subject of climate change and UK fisheries, and anyone involved or with an interest in UK fisheries is invited to attend.

Contact: All Party Parliamentary Group on Fisheries Secretariat 

secretariat@fisheriesappg.org 

Latest UK fisheries statistics sees Newlyn take second place in England's top fishing ports league.

The MMO have just published their annual Sea Fisheries Statistics for 2019...

there are pages and pages of broad and detailed figures, charts, graphs and tables  that give a guide as to the state of the UK fishing industry...

sadly for Newlyn the port loses out again to Brixham when it comes to the top port by value in landings though the port is still number one when it comes to volume.

Breakthrough in sight on foreign crew permits.

Migration report upgrades fishermen to ‘skilled workers’

There are hopes that an end is in sight to the problems of recruiting foreign crews, after a major report recommended that fishermen should be regarded as skilled workers, reports Tim Oliver. 

The Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) has recommended classifying deckhands on ‘large fishing vessels’ (9m and above) as skilled workers, and therefore eligible to be sponsored for a work permit.

It also recommends adding deckhands on vessels of 9m and above to the ‘shortage occupation list’ (SOL). This means that as the role is in recognised shortage, a minimum salary requirement of £20,480 applies, rather than the standard minimum of £25,600.

However, the Home Office will need to accept the MAC recommendations before they can come into force. The recommendations also mean that employers will need to obtain sponsor licences to be able to issue certificates of sponsorship to foreign fishermen.

If the recommendations are accepted by the Home Office, foreign fishermen will be able obtain visas which will permit them and family members to enter the UK. Foreign fishermen must also be able to speak English.

Some sectors of the industry have been hit hard by crewing problems in recent years, and the industry has campaigned strenuously for many years to be allowed to employ foreign fishermen. Successive immigration ministers have rejected their call on the grounds that fishermen are unskilled and therefore their jobs can be filled by UK workers. The MAC report signals a major change in attitude.

Crewing problems have been particularly acute in Northern Ireland and on the west coast of Scotland, where boats, mainly prawn trawlers, are forced to fish inside the 12-mile limit. Foreign fishermen on boats working outside the 12-mile limit can work on transit visas, but this option is not available to boats that work inside 12 miles.

Welcoming the MAC report, Alan McCulla, chief executive of the Anglo-North Irish FPO and a long-standing campaigner for change, told Fishing News: “There’s still a lot of work to be done, but on the face of it, the MAC report is good news for the fishing industry.

“For those of us who are dependent on migrant fishermen, the headline recommendation coming from the report is that deckhands will be added to the list of sponsored occupations, so we look forward to taking that forward. “It’s certainly a major step forward in the right direction to hopefully resolve something that has been a big issue in some parts of the industry for many, many years now. “Those of us here in Northern Ireland, and our colleagues in Scotland, feel that in many ways we were out on the periphery here, fighting a lone battle. “There’s been good industry co-operation in taking this forward, and by the looks of things this report is good news as far as I’m concerned.”

Darren Stevenson, a lawyer who has been working with the industry on this issue for the past six years, welcomed the MAC report, and said that the MAC had essentially endorsed everything the industry had been looking for.

“We argued that being a deckhand is a skilled occupation, and that deckhands should be on the shortage occupation list,” he said. “The MAC have accepted everything we put to them, which we welcome. I think this has been partly because we were able to respond quickly when we were asked for evidence to back our case. “The problem now is that the Home Office has to accept the recommendations. They do tend to accept recommendations, although they can of course modify them, or accept some parts and reject others. “But in view of the compelling submissions made to the MAC by the industry, and the short time left to put the legislation in place before the end of the Brexit transition period on 1 January, 2021, I hope that the recommendations will go through without change.”

He said he believed that the MAC had taken onboard the seriousness of the situation if foreign fishermen were prevented from entering the UK, particularly on the west coast of Scotland and in Northern Ireland, where it could even lead to the collapse of the industry. He said the bottom line is that once it is in place, the new immigration system will be the only way for foreign fishermen to enter the UK, except under the transit visa system, so it is vital that the Home Office accepts the industry’s case and the MAC recommendations.

“I have been involved with the immigration issue in the fishing industry for six years now, and for others in the industry it has been much longer than that, so it’s nice to have made this progress,” he said.

Strong industry evidence for change

The MAC report says it received ‘extensive evidence’ of the training and skills required for deckhands.

A report commissioned by an industry stakeholder and sent as evidence to the MAC says: “Whilst there are no formal requirements for entry to the role of a deckhand, the role is highly skilled and has changed over the last 10-15 years, due to technological changes and changes to the makeup of the crew on a fishing vessel (driven by economic factors).”

The report notes that this now requires deckhands ‘to have good knowledge and skill across all aspects of the job, but also to have in-depth competence in at least one area such as engineering, net repair, fish handling, catch presentation and the sea’. It states that the role requires ‘a higher level of responsibility, given the dangerous conditions in which deckhands are operating’. It argues that for deckhands on larger fishing vessels (9m and above), it takes two to three years to attain the required skills, and five years to ‘develop a person to what might be called ‘deck boss’ or ‘chargehand deckhand’.

This includes ‘complex hand-eye skills… for net-mending and rope splicing’, ‘minute-to-minute responsibility and autonomy’ and ‘a wide range of technical, legal and regulatory knowledge’. Technical training includes first aid, health and safety, firefighting and prevention, and survival at sea, and much of the training is done on the job. Industry stakeholders highlighted ‘competition from other sectors and a lack of UK candidates for roles’ as the main reasons for difficulties in recruitment. 

A fishing industry survey recorded that over half of respondents had difficulty recruiting and had to look outside the UK to find workers with sufficient skills, qualifications and experience. The same survey also found that 63% of respondents said they could pay a deckhand a salary of £25,600, stating that the lack of financial rewards does not discourage UK workers from the industry so much as a perception of the role being ‘dirty, dangerous and dull’. They said that most workers in the industry currently work over 50 hours per week, which is more than other occupations.

In a cross-industry survey in 2017, 23% of job roles onboard fishing vessels were filled by non-UK nationals (this figure was 53% in Northern Ireland).

Fishing: The Great Betrayal

Putting the context of the current negotiations on fishing and Brexit, Ruari McCallion provides an excellent summation of how and why we ended up in the situation where, despite having the greatest percentage of fish in our sovereign waters, UK fishermen are denied access to there fair share under the guise of "equal access".  This essay does not touch on the intricacies of the looming legal negotiations that have been covered elsewhere on Through the Gaps come January 1st 2021.

The Common Fisheries Policy began as a land (or rather, sea) grab, evolved into a stitch-up and grew into an environmentally devastating and commercially disastrous scandal. The EU, UK government and avaricious commercial interests are all to blame – and we’re far from being out of the woods yet. 

In the 1960s, on our regular family holiday to Tarbert, Loch Fyne, a fishing village in Argyllshire, Scotland, the local herring fishing fleet was so big that one could, quite literally, walk from one side of the harbour to the other on the decks of the boats tied up to each other and moored to the quay. 

The harbours in Campbeltown, Carradale and Ardrishaig and on the islands of Arran, the Cumbraes and Bute – indeed, all around the Firth of Clyde – were much the same. These relatively small—usually four-man—drifter boats mostly fished the ‘inland’ coastal waters in the Firth of Clyde, with some adventurous souls sailing through the Crinan Canal to the Sound of Islay, Jura and the rest of the Inner Hebrides. It was a way of life that reached back to Viking times; boat construction still reflected their clinker-build style, although oars and shouts of encouragement had long since been replaced by diesel engine-powered propellers and cranes for lifting the catch into the hold.

When we visited in September 2019 it was still nearly possible to walk dry-shod from the north side of the harbour to the quay on the south but it would be on the decks of privately-owned leisure vessels; the fishing fleet is not even a tenth of the size it was 50 years ago.

In 1970, unnoticed by me – I was much more interested in the launch of Jackie Stewart’s Tyrrell-Ford Formula 1 racing car at Cheshire’s Oulton Park racetrack – Europe’s Common Market countries (the Inner Six, as they were then called) had, in June 1970, proposed Council Regulation 2141/70, which gave all Member States “equal conditions of access to and use of the fishing grounds for all fishing vessels flying the flag of a Member State and registered in Community territory”. This was just after the UK, Denmark, Norway and Ireland, then EFTA (European Free Trade Area) members, had submitted applications to join the European Economic Community (EEC).

Shaky foundations for the CFP

By a remarkable coincidence, the combined marine resources of the applicant countries dwarfed the EEC’s existing fishing grounds, primarily in the Mediterranean (Italy and France) and the Bay of Biscay (France). Between them, the four applicant countries had fishing grounds more than four times the size of the EEC’s at the time. Regulation 2141/70 was adopted in October that year and formed the basis of what would became the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP), which would prove to be the leading cause of the collapse of what had been the main industry and source of employment in that fishing village in Argyllshire and in villages and towns around the coasts of Great Britain, including Fleetwood, Fraserburgh, Grimsby and Lowestoft. The fish processing industries of Grimsby, Lancashire, southern England and eastern Scotland all declined into shadows of their former selves, where they continue to survive at all.

An industry that was once so big it inspired songs about the migrant workers who followed the shoals of herring, cod and mackerel around the coasts, has been eviscerated. There’s really no other word for it: the landed catch in the 21st Century is less than it was in the 19th, despite increased demand and larger, more efficient boats.

It would be easy but ultimately pointless to dwell in the past and engage in weeping and gnashing of teeth for a time long gone. However, understanding the history is important in appreciating the need for massive reform of fishing in the waters of the independent UK, both to restore an industry that has always been rather more important than its proportion of GDP – in the same way as agriculture and manufacturing are – and, even more important, to protect and restore the marine ecology.

The CFP was not always part of the European Common Market, Community or Union; it is not even mentioned in the original Treaty of Rome. It was concocted in haste and on doubtful legal premises in 1970, when the UK, Republic of Ireland, Denmark and Norway were in the process of applying to join the EEC. A cornerstone of successful application to join the Community/Union, then as now, is acceptance of the Acquis communautaire: the cumulative body of European Community/Union laws and regulations.

No price too high for Heath

When the UK and fellow EFTA countries announced they were applying for membership, earlier in 1970, the basis for the Common Fisheries Policy did not exist. By the time the applications were submitted, in Autumn of that year, the framework was in place. In order to be accepted the UK had to agree to the Acquis communautaire, which now included the ‘equal conditions of access to and use of the fishing grounds for all fishing vessels flying the flag of a Member State and registered in Community territory’. Then Prime Minister Edward Heath did so, in public, after a formal lunch with French President Pompidou, and at his request, during the Summit meeting in May 1971.

“Britain could reasonably regard it, I think not unfairly, as a hostile act on the part of the six, to open a Common Fisheries Policy and begin negotiating it and completing it before Britain actually joined, so that her, or our, interests suffered from it.” – Prof Vernon Bogdanor.[1] Why did the UK acquiesce so tamely to a policy that was so inimical to its interests, especially when Norway rejected EEC membership, specifically on this issue?

According to Sir Con O’Neill, who led the British delegation in negotiations to join the EEC, then Prime Minister Edward Heath was so determined that negotiations would succeed that he was prepared to pay any price; the only thing that mattered was accession. “Swallow the lot and swallow it now”, were the instructions, it was reported. Sir Con acknowledged later that the negotiating team “failed to foresee the way in which, and the intensity with which, political pressures on the question of fishing limits would develop”. Ultimately the abject failure of the UK to defend its fisheries asset, which it underestimated, was regarded as so embarrassing – or “sensitive”, in diplomat-speak – that the official report was suppressed for 19 years. The way the fisheries were so undervalued, while clearly being regarded as a ‘Crown Jewel’ by the EEC, makes one question the value of the high-powered education the negotiating team had received at Oxbridge, and the lessons gained from their undoubted experience in foreign and trade affairs.

Lie, lie and lie again


But there is evidence that the enormity of the error was realised, in high places. Sir Edward Heath tried to get the Norwegian Prime Minister to publicly lie about the effect the CFP would have. Sir Con O’Neill was more concerned about the ‘political pressures’ than the fisheries and their communities themselves. The White Paper in 1971 promised that Britain would not sign an accession treaty until the Common Market’s fisheries policy was changed. Geoffrey Rippon, then Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and the parliamentary leader of the negotiations, repeated this promise to Parliament and to the Tory Party conference. In November, Heath determined that the fishing policy had to be accepted as it stood, or the scheduled 1973 accession would not happen. He instructed Rippon to give way. When questioned about this in the House of Commons on December 13 1971, his answer was a lie: he assured the House that claiming that Britain had retained complete control over the waters round its coastline. The reality – that the Heath and subsequent governments ceded all fishing rights to the EEC –continued to be denied and concealed for at least the next 30 years.

Norway rejected membership; UK governments repeatedly assured Parliament and the public that “proper account would be taken of [the fishermen’s] interests”. A secret Scottish Office memo, dated November 9, stated that “in the wider UK context, they must be regarded as expendable”. We are hearing much the same argument today.

1971 was not the end of the initial betrayal, or incompetence, or failure of nerve or negotiating skill – call it whatever you wish: it was barely the start. The CFP proper was not finalised until 1983, a fact that merely served to underline that the initial imposition had no real basis in existing EEC Treaties.

Policies of disaster

Measures taken along the way include the extension of territorial fishing limits from 12 miles to 200 miles in 1976 and the establishment of quotas in 1983, based on ‘historical catches’, which stretched the definition of ‘historical’ somewhat; they were by reference to landed catches in the 1970s, after the UK had become part of the EEC and acquiesced to the putative CFP. That scheme was an incentive to all the EEC members, even those without historical fishing industries, to engage in a free-for-all to maximise their ‘historical catch’, even if the landed marine life was inedible. The ‘scrap and build’ incentives in the 1980s encouraged the destruction of traditional fishing fleets and building of new vessels that were even more efficient at hoovering up fish that were already heading towards endangerment.

The unregulated competition for quota led to the UK’s share of fish in seas that were its historical back yard was cut, from pretty much all to less than 30%.

The dangers of overfishing were finally, belatedly, acknowledged by the EU and the first major reform of CFP was promulgated in 1992. It barely tinkered at the edges of the problem; it was not until a second reform, in 2002, that grants for new boat construction were scrapped and premiums for decommissioning existing boats were increased. That reform also saw the introduction of recovery plans for threatened species and management plans for existing stocks. In recognition of the urgency of the situation, it was decided to set up the Community Fisheries Control Agency, operational from 2007 – five years later. The 2002 reforms still did not address and overcome the problem of ‘discard’ – fish caught in excess of quota having to be thrown back into the water. They were usually already dead. In 2007, 23,600 tonnes of cod, 31,048 of hake, and 6,000 of whiting were discarded in the North Sea.[2]

The EU had still failed to bite the bullet of conservation by imposing effective limits on catch sizes, boat sizes and fishing seasons. And the UK’s quota share remained below 30%.

Third time lucky?

And so, a third round of reform was initiated, with the publication in 2009 of an EU Green Paper that set out what was described by the Fishing Commissioner, Joe Borg, as an “ambitious vision” for a ‘healthy European fishery and sustainable fish stocks by 2020’.

“The current CFP has failed. It has not given us healthy fish stocks and it has not delivered a sustainable living for our fishing industry. Only genuine fundamental reform of this broken policy can turn around these failures,” said Richard Benyon, UK Fisheries Minister, in 2011. “I am confident that we can make the case for the radical reform that is needed, alongside our allies at home and abroad, to grasp this once in a decade opportunity.” He wasn’t the only one to voice concern and optimism.

“The report of the Court of Auditors reinforces my conviction that business as usual is not an option. We need new ideas. In our proposals for a new Common Fisheries Policy we want to break with the past.” That was Maria Damanaki, Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Commissioner, speaking in 2011 in response to a European Court of Auditors report on fishing overcapacity. It concluded that “a new approach may be needed”; a view that may have prompted a variety of responses, not all of which would be entirely complimentary.

Borg was convinced that a healthy and sustainable fisheries policy could be achieved by this year; the sight of Dutch supertrawlers plundering the Channel and southern Irish Sea earlier in 2020 suggests that his faith may have been misplaced.

All this is before the scandal of ‘flags of convenience’ and the sale of quotas to those with the deepest pockets. The European Court of Justice ruled in December 2000, in the Factortame case, that the UK could not prevent British fishing quotas being owned by non-UK vessels – Spanish, in this particular case. Any lingering doubt that the UK could protect its own waters or that the CFP could control commercial over-exploitation disappeared.

There is no alternative

After 40 years of trial and undeniable failure, of denuded fish stocks, species driven to the brink of extinction and the despoliation of the marine environment, it is impossible to deny that the CFP has failed. As there have been so many attempts and each has foundered on competing national and commercial interests, it has to be recognised that the CFP is simply unreformable. If we are to protect the marine environment, develop sustainable fisheries and enable threatened species to recover, we simply must take full control of our Economic Zone waters and protect them from the exploitation that is turning them into watery deserts.

The concern is that, once again, the fisheries will be ruled a ‘minor’ part of the UK economy and a price ‘worth swallowing’, as in the Heath days. If someone like Patrick Minford can make such an assertion in the case of manufacturing, which is directly worth approximately 10% of GDP and indirectly feeds 25-30%, what hope would fishing have? But the arguments remain the same: if fishing is so valuable to France, Spain and the Netherlands, why can the UK government not see it in the same light? What is preventing it?

That question is, ultimately, very hard to answer – unless it is simply that, as with manufacturing, the civil service departments simply do not understand.

In the event that the UK secures complete control over its fisheries within the maritime economic zone – up to 200 miles from the shoreline –it is still going to be faced with challenges on what to do and how to build, deliver and sustain an economically vibrant and environmentally sound industry. The reality is: this cannot be done overnight on the 31st December 2020 in time for a brave new world on 1 January 2021.

Therefore if the EU were to finally start behaving reasonably, yearly negotiations with the UK based on zonal attachment, as they already do with Norway, could be quickly agreed. However if they continue to demand 100% of the status quo, and carry on making ridiculous assertions about the UK regaining sovereignty over its waters but it being ‘another story, speaking about the fish which are inside those waters’ as Barnier did recently, then under no deal, EU fishing boats should be excluded and UK fishing stocks would replenish while we rebuild our fishing industry. Perhaps then the EU might finally see sense!

Written by Ruari McCallion this piece appeared on the Briefings for Britain website.

Annex: Milestones on Fishing’s Timeline of Tragedy 

• 1970: EEC countries hastily proposed Council Regulation 2141/70, which gave all Member States “equal conditions of access to and use of the fishing grounds for all fishing vessels flying the flag of a Member State and registered in Community territory. This became part of the ‘Acquis communautaire’ – the body of existing EEC law.

• 1971: Ted Heath, UK Prime Minister, publicly commits to accept the Acquis communautaire after a lunch with President Pompidou of France.

• 1983: Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) comes into force. All EU fishing grounds are managed as a “common pond”.

• Each country’s quota – its share of the fish that can be caught – is based on its “historic track record”; in practice, this means the catches its fleet recorded in the mid- to late-1970s.

• The mid-1970s saw a huge influx of Belgian and Dutch ‘beam trawlers’ catching sole in the Irish Sea, building up their nations’ track record – which had, previously, been very small, compared to GB & I.

• In the early 1990s, the UK Government formalised the right of “sector” fishermen to move licences and track records between vessels, opening up a new kind of trade in quota.

• 1999 – UK replaced track records with Fixed Quota Allocations (FQA), which give the holder an unchanging share of the UK’s quota. These were based on their catches in the mid-nineties.

• The value of “track records” increased to such a degree that most individual fishermen find it impossible to compete with the financial power of large companies, according to (John Goodlad; Scottish Fishermen’s Federation).

• These liberalisation measures opened up the industry to “quota hoppers”: foreign owners of ‘flagships’: vessels that fly a flag of convenience in order to access and own British Fixed Quota Allocations.

• By mid-1996 there were around 150 quota hoppers on the UK register.

• By 1999, according to Iain MacSween of the Scottish Fishermen’s Organisation, “very considerable quantities of what were once UK quotas have been bought particularly by the Dutch”. Virtually every licence sold in the previous year and a half for “pelagic” midwater fish like mackerel and herring had “ended up in the ownership of the Netherlands freezer trawler fleet”.

• EU’s decommissioning programme in the late 1990s -intended to reduce overfishing by cutting capacity – drove up demand for quota and galvanised the trade, attracting quota hoppers and speculators into quota trading. According to a report by Unearthed, in 2018:

• The five largest UK quota-holders control around 37% of UK fishing quota, including 29% directly, with the balance by investment in other fishing companies.

• Around half of England’s quota is ultimately owned by Dutch, Icelandic, or Spanish interests.

• The North Atlantic Fishing Company, a UK subsidiary of a Dutch multinational, controls around a quarter of England’s fishing quota.

• Thirteen of the top 25 quota holders have directors, shareholders, or vessel partners who were convicted of offences in Scotland’s £63m “black fish” scam in which trawlermen and fish processors worked together to evade quota limits and land 170,000 tonnes of undeclared herring and mackerel.

• The ‘track record’ system worked against efforts to curb overfishing by encouraging a “race to fish” – trawlers would fish when prices were too low, just to maintain their track record. It also encouraged “ghost fishing” –reporting larger catches than actually landed, to bump up quota.

Ruari McCallion is a freelance business writer and journalist, specialising in manufacturing and productive industries. His articles and reports have been published in the UK, Europe, USA, China, Africa and Australia.

Notes:

[1] Emeritus Gresham Professor of Law, current Visiting Gresham Professor of Political History, Research Professor at King’s College London, a Fellow of the British Academy and an Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies. Prior to 2010, Professor Bogdanor was a Fellow of Brasenose College and Professor of Government at Oxford University.

[2] Which goes on to say “…when others also look agog at why trawlermen are still campaigning when the Brexit referendum was won, the answer isn’t complicated. It’s because successive governments have each in turn let them down in the past.”

Additional info:

Here, you can read the latest report and data sets from the MMO on fish landings cover the period 2014-2018-19.

Beam trawler St Georges lands in Newlyn.

 

Skipper Billy Worth and his crew put ashore 160 boxes of prime fish at the end of a trip where winds gusted up to 70mph. Overnight, the crew replaced worn chain links and shackles, repaired numerous holes in the heavy net before both trawls were stowed on deck ready for the next week-long trip.