According to Fisheries Secretary Richard Lochhead Scotland’s fishermen should be ‘suitably rewarded’ for adopting conservation methods. He was in Aalborg, Denmark, to address the Danfish International Conference. Scotland has been working closely with Denmark, Germany and the UK to explore what additional benefits can be delivered for fleets and the environment by expanding the use of CCTV.
Lochhead said that he is seeking additional catch quota opportunities for vessels using CCTV next year. He informed that developing more intuitive means of counting effort as actual fishing time, not just time away from port, is also a priority. He said this is ‘potentially a major step’ in raising awareness of the benefits of CCTV as a management tool.
Lochhead further said that it is not possible to ignore problems such as discards and wait until 2013 for the broken Common Fisheries Policy to be overhauled. Decisive action is needed now to help secure a more sustainable and profitable future. He added that Scotland and Denmark share an appetite for change and it’s clear that CCTV has the potential to be an extremely powerful tool.
According to him the initial results of our trial are very promising. We hope that the Danish and Scottish experience of CCTV will provide enough justification to allow a trial of a catch quota system next year.
