According to the report Stephen Lockwood, chairman of the Marine Protection Zone Fishing coalition, has stated his views on protecting the marine environment while respecting the needs of the fishing industry. He was speaking at EU Green Week Conference where he said that how he first went to sea as a schoolboy on a commercial trawler in 1962.
He told that over the past 40 plus years he has undertaken research on inshore fishery ecology and carried out commercial fish-stock assessments but for the past quarter century my attention has focussed on the fishery aspects of coastal zone management. He said that the fishing industry was familiar and comfortable with the notion of restricted areas when rationally and fully explained.
Lockwood said that of equal importance in the context of MPA site selection, it should be demonstrated that there are areas in which skippers’ interest is one of absolute avoidance. He informed that it was data such as these were used by the Scottish Fishermen’s Federation and the statutory conservation body for Scotland – Scottish Natural Heritage – not only to refine and define site boundaries that minimised the restrictions on the industry around Stanton Banks, but also brought to light features of which SNH were previously unaware.
