Ian Gatt, President of the Scottish Fishermen’s Federation, visited Shetland last week as part of his commitment to regularly visit all the main Scottish fishing ports so as to keep in touch with the grassroots membership.
On the first day of his visit he met with skippers and crew of the local fishing boats Defiant, Guardian Angel and Mizpah before holding a meeting with Simon Leiper, managing director of the Shetland Catch pelagic processing factory. Also present was Shetland Fishermen’s Association chief executive, Hansen Black.
During the talks, Mr Leiper outlined the economic realities of operating a large processing factory with vastly reduced catching opportunities.
Mr Gatt said: “It was agreed that the unaccounted mortality figures used in the mackerel assessment should be revisited as a matter of urgency, forecast budgets produced by the factory had been blown apart by the level of TAC cuts. It was encouraging to hear however that Shetland Catch was looking to utilise some of this year’s blue whiting catch for human consumption.”
Mr Gatt also met with skipper Alex Wiseman of the pelagic vessel Kings Cross, which landed 600 tonnes of mackerel into Shetland Catch later that day. Skipper Wiseman outlined that a pelagic Regional Advisory Council meeting is due to be held at the end of January to discuss unaccounted mortality.
On the second day of his visit, the SFF President went to sea with skipper Victor Laurenson on his new whitefish seiner, Radiant Star. The boat had been working daily from Scalloway during her first trip and this was the last fishing day before tying up for the weekend. The day was spent on the Vee Skerries grounds where four shots produced 52 boxes of mixed fish.
Skipper Laurenson, like the rest of the Shetland fishermen Mr Gatt spoke to, was supportive of the new approach taken on effort managed agreed at the December Fish Council.
Mr Gatt said: “Conservation credits is a new concept and a scheme which rewards vessels for using more selective fishing methods must be welcomed however it has been stressed to me that that both the credits and the conservation methods must be realistic. There would seem little point in having meeting upon meeting to devise conservation methods which were not utilised.”
He added: “The concerns of the Shetland men are no different to many round the coast, enough quota and days to fish, a reduction in the leasing costs of quota and days and a large reduction in the cost of fuel.
“I was very impressed by Radiant Star, from the build quality, spaciousness and sea keeping ability on at times a very breezy day. The Scantrol autotrawl system worked well in flyshooter mode and although Victor is new to the autotrawl system it was plain to see that after a period of fine tuning the parameters of the programme that catch rates would increase. I would like to thank Victor and crew for an interesting day out.”
