Hundreds of fishermen from Holland and Belgium took their grievances against the discard ban and the loss of fishing grounds due to the expansion of wind farms to Amsterdam this weekend, making plain their dissatisfaction with the way their industry is heading.
Dutch fishermen’s movement EMK is planning to take its protest against the growth of North Sea wind farms and European fisheries policies to Amsterdam this summer with a public march through the capital to raise awareness of the challenges facing the industry.
The Faroese fleet yesterday sailed en masse to dock in Tórshavn where fishermen came together to protest against the government’s plans to drop the longstanding days-at-sea system for most of the fleet, to replace it with quotas.
Bulgarian fishermen are still at loggerheads with the country’s fisheries administration and a demonstration is planned for today as their protests continue.
The Black Sea Sunrise fishermen’s association, based in the Black Sea port of Varna, has strongly opposed proposals to close fishing areas to fishing. These proposals are due to the incidence of dolphin mortality, but the fishing sector disputes that fishing activity is to blame.
The grassroots Dutch ‘Eendracht Maakt Kracht’ (Unity Is Strength) campaign, kickstarted online by a group of fishermen, has been gathering pace.
The results of the UK referendum should be sending a very clear signal to Brussels that fishermen find EU fisheries policy too bureaucratic, especially in regard to the Natura 2000 regulations, according to Johan Nooitgedagt of Dutch PO De Nederlandse Vissersbond.
Thousands of people from the fishing and aquaculture industries demonstrated on Saturday in Santiago de Compostela, the capital of the Spanish autonomous region of Galicia which is also home to much of the country’s fishing industry.