The discard ban has a colossal potential for chaos, according to Johan Nooitgedagt of Dutch fishermen’s association De Nederlandse Vissersbond.
‘We don’t believe the discard ban will work. The fishermen won’t accept it. But how do these mistakes get made again and again? We’ve made so much progress on mesh size and minimum landing sizes, and now we have this. The message to Brussels is that we need to stop the stupid rules.’
The EMK group, the grassroots movement that appeared via WhatsApp as skippers talked among themselves, has the discard ban as one of its main issues, and a recent demonstration in Rotterdam highlighted the grievances of fishermen concerned about loss of fishing grounds and rampant over-regulation.
‘EMK stands for strength through unity, and we are very happy that they are doing this work, demonstrating together and publicly over conditions and the discard ban’s implications. We have supported what they are doing and would like every PO to do the same,’ he said.
‘The Rotterdam demonstration was successful – but this needs to be done again and again to raise consciousness and maintain the momentum.’
He said that the key problem with the discard ban and its implementation has been the failure to get the industry to buy into it.
‘The first thing you learn in management is that if you want to introduce something new, those who will have to deal with it must accept it first. They don’t understand that fishermen have a different perspective, and we could be looking at total chaos in 2019. This could turn out to be an even bigger challenge that when quotas were introduced in 1977.’
For the full story, go to the latest edition of Hook & Net.
