Common Fisheries Policy

New reports question if there are plenty more fish in the sea

Posted by Willie — 4 August 2010 at 10:57am - Comments

Not plenty more where that came from © Greenpeace/Cobb

If you're reading this in the UK, you ran out of fish today.

Basically, the UK eats more fish than its waters produce and, thanks to some nifty fish-counting from the clever folks at NEF, that equates to the 4th of August being the day we use up our year's fish supply. In comparison to the EU as a whole, we fair a month better but then we are a country with quite a lot of seas, certainly in comparison with, er, Austria and Romania. Yet, for almost five full months we are relying on fish from somewhere else. And that might be okay, if there was plenty of it to go around. But of course, as the old saying should go, there aren't plenty more fish in the sea.

Article tagged as: common fisheries policy, DEFRA, fish stocks, marine reserves, oceans, overfishing, seafish

Exposed: Europe's history of overfishing

Posted by Willie — 4 May 2010 at 6:06pm - Comments

The past few days have seen a couple of pretty important meetings in Spain about the reform of the Common Fisheries Policy (the CFP). You might not have seen much coverage, which isn't that surprising when there's an election going on, nor when you appreciate that very few people know what CFP stands for. Amongst fishy circles, the acronym is often re-interpreted, but I'm too polite to say what the F would stand for.

Article tagged as: callum roberts, CFP, common fisheries policy, europe, marine conservation society, oceans, spain

CFP 'pantomime farce' continues as cod quota is raised again

Posted by Willie — 19 December 2008 at 3:40pm - Comments

In many ways the bluster from Europe's fisheries ministers the week before Christmas is as predictable as a pantomime script, if only it were meant to be funny! They all trumpet a 'fair deal' and talk about 'striking a balance', and most hilariously, 'respecting the science'. But in reality short-term political expediency continues to trump scientific reality. Today the EU announced its fishing quotas for 2009, as usual doing their best to ignore their own scientists' recommendations. Instead they agreed to increase quotas for endangered North Sea cod by 30 per cent, after the scientists had recommended that to be safe they shouldn't be catching any.

Article tagged as: cod, common fisheries policy, discards, EU, ICES, oceans

Not quite the cod wars

Posted by Willie — 8 December 2008 at 6:02pm - Comments

The Norwegian coastguard captured this footage of the Prolific discarding up to 80% of its catch of endangered fish

Norwegian coastguards filmed this UK trawler discarding 80% of its catch of endangered fish just outside Norwegian waters earlier this year

Every year the EU and Norway get together to agree how to share out fishing quotas in their adjacent waters (remember, Norway is not a member of the EU, and has it's own exclusive fishing zone, unlike EU countries). They are gathering this week, and it always happens before the annual quota-haggling meeting of the EU Council in Brussels, where the EU decide and divide on quotas for fish in EU waters.

Usually they do their best to ignore scientific advice, and amazingly all of the fisheries ministers seem to manage to go back home claiming to have won a 'good deal' for their respective fishing industries.

Article tagged as: common fisheries policy, discards, EU, norway, quota

It's official: EU fishing policy is crazy

Posted by jossc — 14 August 2008 at 3:01pm - Comments

Norwegian coastguard video of the Shetland trawler Prolific dumping its catch in the North Sea

The crew of the Prolific discarding their catch

So at last the sheer waste involved in modern trawling has been captured on camera. Last week a Norwegian coastguard cutter filmed the crew of a Shetland trawler, the Prolific, openly dumping over 5,000 kg of cod and other dead white fish in UK waters. Now this footage is rightly causing a wave of revulsion in the media at the scale of unnecessary waste at a time of rapidly rising food prices and, ironically, when our own Prime Minister is telling us not to waste food.

Article tagged as: common fisheries policy, EU, ICES, marine reserves, prolific, trawling
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