A British trawler was filmed throwing five tonnes of endangered fish caught in UK waters. The fishes were caught in the Norwegian sector of the North Sea. The film has raised uproar in Norway as well as in UK. The incident was filmed by Norwegian government coastguards. The UK trawler, the Prolific, a Shetland-based trawler, openly discarding more than 5,000 kg of cod and other dead white fish, or nearly 80 percent of its catch.
The coastguard told that the boat had previously been inspected in Norwegian waters and declared legal, before crossing into UK waters where it dumped its load. According to him the incident took place on 2 August but the video only came to light in Britain on Wednesday August 13. It is illegal to discard fish in Norwegian waters, but boats are forced to do so in European Union waters if they have caught the wrong species of fish or fish that are too small.
According to EU statistics in 2007 between 40 percent and 60 percent of all fish caught by trawlers in the North Sea is discarded. The practice of dumping is widely recognised as unsustainable but inevitable given the present EU quota system. Norwegian minister for fisheries and coastal affairs Helga Pedersen, reacted strongly after seeing the film and said that she would press for review of the EU fishing policy and wanted to ban any boat discarding fish that were caught in Norwegian waters.
Reidar Kaarbo, an independent analyst of Norwegian government policy told that the EU community cannot be taken seriously if it allows this kind of behaviour. This is certainly not how to manage the world’s resources. While UK fish experts said the practice of discarding fish was common but had rarely been so dramatically documented. Opinions were split on whether the Prolific was discarding fish for which it had no quota, or that it was “high-grading” its catch.
Willie MacKenzie, Greenpeace fisheries campaigner, expressed that it is a disgrace as this practice is depleting populations that are already overfished and it is happening everywhere.
