Fisheries Secretary Richard Lochhead has welcomed the European Fisheries Commissioner’s pledge to eliminate the “scandalous waste” of discards. However, he pointed out that Europe missed a major opportunity to address the issue head on at last month’s critical fisheries negotiations.
The Scottish Government has been leading calls for immediate action by the EU to radically reform their rules which require fishermen to throw good quality fish, dead, back into the sea.
The issue has been brought back into sharp focus this week through campaigning chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s TV programmes, leading EU Fisheries Commissioner Maria Damanaki to say that we “cannot afford to throw fish away, it is not sustainable”, and that tackling discards will be central in reforming the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP).
Responding to the Commissioner”s comments, Mr Lochhead said:
“As every day goes by, more and more people are getting behind the Scottish Government’s long-held position that forcing our fishermen to discard marketable fish back into the sea, dead, is a scandalous waste of valuable food. The campaign is now being taken up by others including television personalities and is capturing the public imagination.
“But each day that passes where this goes unresolved is not only a massive missed opportunity, but an economic and environmental affront, with EU rules, perversely, working against efforts to manage fish stocks sustainably.
“The practice of discards – throwing fish back, dead, into the sea – is a scandal and a waste of a precious resource that is utterly indefensible. I welcome Commissioner Damanaki’s support for the growing anti-discard campaign and I am pleased that she recognises the need to change the broken CFP if we are to stop wasting valuable resource.
“Scotland has been leading the way on campaigning for change and on developing innovative measures to reduce discards and move towards a ‘land all you catch’ system. But our hands are tied by an ineffective and broken CFP which doesn’t recognise the realities of mixed fisheries, and by Norway, who refused to sanction a major expansion of the scheme.
“The Commissioner has the right rhetoric, but the EU is still not putting her words into practice. During the autumn negotiations, we pushed for very specific measures to help tackle discards on the west coast, where stock are in a precarious state, but the Commission rejected our proposals and cut quotas to impossibly low levels which do nothing but force fishermen to throw away marketable fish and risk increased mortality for vulnerable stocks.
“I’m in no doubt that Europe missed a golden opportunity in the autumn to tackle the issue of discards head on, imposing regimes and quota decisions that only encourage discards. We’ll continue to push the need for change at every opportunity, but it will be the end of this year before the EU can deliver on what the Commission has been saying they want done.”
In 2009, Scottish vessels were forced by the Common Fisheries Policy to discard almost 28,000 tonnes of fish, around a quarter of the whitefish catch, valued at 33 million pounds.
The Scottish Government had pressed the EU to allow all interested vessels to take part in a second catch quota scheme for 2011, where vessels can land, rather than be forced to discard, an extra amount equal to 12 per cent of the Total Allowable Catch (TAC) for cod. A limited expansion of the catch quota trials been agreed, which is expected to double the 17 vessels that took part in 2010. The Scottish Government has received 58 applications to participate in 2011 – accounting for around half of the whitefish fleet.
The Scottish Conservation Credits scheme uses more selective fishing gear to avoid catching undersized and unwanted fish in the first place. Fishermen taking part are rewarded by being able to spend more days fishing at sea for other species.
