Follow the crew of the Arctic Sunrise on their campaign for Marine Reserves in our North Sea Tour blog
Since we left Fetlar we have engaged with a lot of fishing vessels north of Shetland, mostly Scottish boats but also German and Norwegian. Where possible we have tried to communicate with them, particularly those involved in catching cod, either as a target species or as bycatch. And we have had some interesting conversations with them.
For seven years now, scientists have said that there are not enough cod in the North Sea to fish any, and the fishing industry has continuously refuted all of that scientific data. Instead, they have lobbied governments like the UK to make sure that any cut to cod quotas were as small as possible. Interestingly, when the scientific advice on other species is that its populations are healthier, and the quotas can be increased, there is no such rubbishing of the scientific data by the fishing industry.
Yesterday I was told by fishermen that there were a) no cod around, not any more; and b) that the scientists didn't know what they were talking about - fishermen knew best. Strange then that the fourth fishing vessel we chatted to suggested he was catching lots of cod, and they represented about 90 per cent of his catch. I guess that just goes to show there's some truth in the old stereotype of fishermen telling tall tales.
The truth is that there is a consensus amongst scientists that cod stocks have been drastically depleted, and the population in the North Sea could go the same way as the cod population in the north-west Atlantic off the Grand Banks. That crashed in the early nineties and has never recovered. Even if there is doubt about the levels of stocks, we should apply the precautionary principle and assume the worst, trying to minimise the damage to the fish stocks and the rest of the marine ecosystem.
Fishing less is obviously a bitter pill to swallow, but in reality it is decades of political inaction that has got us to the situation we are in today. Certainly constituencies and areas whose livelihoods depend on fishing should be compensated, retrained and reinvested in if we need to fish less for all our sakes. The flip side to that is that the livelihoods of fishermen are even more threatened if things keep going as they are now...
