Britannia Radio

For decades now the Common Fisheries policy has gone from worse to  
even worse while other countries look on in disbelief.  Norway make  
dumping illegal  All fish caught must be landed and if over-quota  
price penalties apply.   In Brussels they always know best!  It’s a  
crying shame that the Fisheries Commissioner comes from the  
Mediterranean where fish are less plentiful anyway and bear little  
relation to North Atlantic fisheries which once were enormous.
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FINANCIAL TIMES                21.5.09
Storm threatens as Brussels trawls for answer
    By Joshua Chaffin in Boulogne-sur-Mer

When words no longer suffice to describe the irrationality that has  
taken hold of his profession, Patrick Ramet, a third generation  
fisherman from the northern French port of Etaples, reaches for his  
mobile phone.

There, on its screen, is a photograph recently sent by his cousin  
with the caption, “Quel Horreur!” It features the deck of a local  
trawler strewn with dead cod, their mouths agape.

They were swept up in the pursuit of sole, red mullet and other fish  
in the English Channel. No matter that the area was teeming with cod  
– and big ones, according to Mr Ramet and other local fishermen –  
France had already exhausted its quota for the first half of the  
year, and they had to be dumped back into the ocean.

“How can you do something like this, and what purpose does it serve?”  
asks Mr Ramet.

How the European Union manages its agricultural resources and the  
role Brussels bureaucrats play in setting quotas and subsidies has  
long been one of the bloc’s most contentious issues.

Now the EU’s fisheries are at the centre of a new storm as the  
European Commission launches a fresh effort to shake up an industry  
that it argues is bloated.

The Commission acknowledged years of policy failure in an unusually  
candid report last month, which concluded that too many subsidy- 
dependent fishing boats were chasing too few fish. “If nothing  
happens soon, we will soon end up with no fish to fish for,” said Joe  
Borg, the fisheries commissioner.

About the same time in northern France, frustration took a more  
ominous turn as fishermen blockaded ports from Dunkirk to Boulogne  
for two days, choking commerce and stranding thousands of Easter  
tourists. Their chief complaint was that the cod quota – a perennial  
source of conflict – was threatening their existence.

“You can put fish in the freezer, but not men,” says Jean-Marc Hebbe,  
bemoaning a quota-induced layoff that will keep many fishermen ashore  
until July.

Discarded fish, critics charge, are one of the more disturbing  
symptoms of the problems with the EU’s fisheries policy.

In the North Sea last year, as much cod was discarded as caught –  
roughly 24,000 tonnes – according to the Danish government.

Much of that was the result of a practice known as “high-grading”. EU  
quotas are based on the amount of fish a boat brings to shore, as  
opposed to the amount actually caught, so fishermen often discard  
smaller fish so that they can fill their take with the biggest, most  
valuable catch.

Ascertaining just how many cod there are in the sea is hardly a  
straightforward exercise, says John Casey, a researcher at Cefa, a  
marine research consultancy, which has advised the Commission.  
Scientists rely on data of varying quality supplied by local  
fisheries. Their analysis is inevitably backward looking. They are  
also forced to make annual predictions to support quotas when they  
are more comfortable taking a longer-term view.

But their bulging nets do not necessarily support the fishermen’s  
position, either. While they see an abundance of fish, they tend to  
overlook the number that must be left in the ocean to maintain stocks  
for the future.

Cod further confuse the situation because they tend to grow quickly,  
Mr Casey says. Large cod can be juveniles who have yet to reach  
breeding age, for example. “The fishermen believe what they say, but  
they are only seeing part of the story,” he says.

The gulf between scientists and fishermen is likely only to grow as  
the Commission argues for reducing the EU fleet. [That’s its  
perennial answer.  Norway has sustainable stocks and a viable fishing  
industry right next door -cs] By some estimates, Europe’s 80,000- 
vessel fishing fleet, is three times the size needed.

Past plans to pay fishermen to scrap vessels cost hundreds of  
millions of euros but had little effect. They have been offset by  
advancing technology, which makes finding and catching fish easier.

The new buzz-phrase in Brussels is “tradable fishing rights”. The  
idea is to set an overall quota and then allot a portion to each  
fisherman based on his historic catch. The fisherman can then opt to  
fish that amount, or sell his quota to others.

Denmark implemented such a system in January 2007. Since then, its  
fleet has shrunk by 30 per cent while profitability has increased.  
Older fishermen and less efficient boats, in particular, were more  
likely to take the money and stay ashore, according to Poul Torring,  
the head of Gemba Seafood Consulting, which advised the government.

The Danes are also testing a programme in which boats that install  
cameras to prove they are not discarding fish will be rewarded with  
good conduct certificates that will allow them to fetch higher prices  
from consumers concerned about where fish come from and how they are  
harvested.

Fishermen remain wary of any policy that threatens to reduce their  
numbers and of tradable rights, which some argue would be akin to  
salt water hedge funds that would allow a few large and savvy  
participants to dominate the market.

“It’s the financialisation of fishing. It will no longer be fishing –  
it will be a bank,” says Pierre-George Dachicourt, the president of  
France’s National Committee of Fishermen.

Mr Dachicourt, who followed in his father’s footsteps and went to  
work on a boat at the age of 13, has done well from fishing. “It’s  
given me this,” he says, surveying a gated manse down the coast from  
Boulogne, with twin marble staircases and a decorative anchor wedged  
in the front yard.

But he bristles at the idea that biologists hired by Brussels should  
have more say than locals in determining where to fish and when. “The  
problem with your typical European dignitary,” he says, “is that they  
have a lot of respect for the fish, but not for the fishermen.”