fat cats

[Leon Roskilly]

Jaffa:

I am just highlighting the point that it is possible to have well run fisheries when you have control over your own resources and, as you say, it matters to your economy. How much are fisheries really ever going to matter to the EU overall? How much would they matter to Scotland if it had control of its waters?

The Royal Society of Edinburgh looked into that proposition quite deeply (and all other matters regarding the management of Scotland's fisheries).

 

Their conclusion is:

 

"Many Scottish fishermen have told us they would like the UK to withdraw from the CFP.

 

We see no prospect of this without the UK trying to renegotiate the terms of its Treaty of Accession. It is unlikely that new terms for remaining in the EU could be negotiated or that they would allow withdrawal from a policy that all other member states accept.

 

Withdrawal altogether from the EU would have major and damaging consequences for the Scottish economy (e.g., it would impact on the 60% of Scotland’s manufactured exports that go to the EU, it would deter inward investment. and the substantial aid that Scotland receives from the EU Structural Funds would no longer be available).

 

Withdrawal would have to be followed by negotiations with the EU on behalf of the member states with whom Scotland has traditionally shared fisheries as well as with countries outside the EU such as Norway, Iceland and the Faroe Islands.

 

Even for fishermen, it is doubtful this would lead to any better situation than currently exists under the CFP."

 

Instead they recommend that effort is better spent fixing the CFP rather than hoping that all problems will be solved by withdrawing.

 

 

Full report here

 

When I was learning to fly, I was told that the reason that so many emergency landings were cocked up was that the pilot, faced with no engine and an inevitable landing on rocky ground (say), instead of accepting the inevitable and making the best job of that, would keep thinking 'If only I had never entered this valley, if I use the remaining height to fly to the other end maybe it will be better there, or the ridge will be lower there and I'll still have enough height to get out'.

 

He/she would have a higher chance of survival by concentrating on making the best job of a landing in difficult and dangerous conditions.

 

And that's the big problem with much of what I see.

 

"We could manage our fisheries much better if things were different"

 

Would Scotland really be better off out of the CFP, if the CFP still failed, remembering that (I'm told) 80 species of UK fish need to be well managed internationally (as opposed to 20 species for Iceland).

 

Can we train Scotland's fish not to swim over the median line?

 

Tight Lines - leon

 

[ 29. April 2005, 09:12 AM: Message edited by: Leon Roskilly ]

[Jaffa]

Leon, I've read that report and was extremely impressed with it. The points you highlight are valid.

 

However, its surely one thing to think about the UK renegotiating the terms of Accession, and another for an independant Scotland to do so.

 

I suspect you believe, as the subject is rarely covered in the English papers, that Scottish Independance is some remote idea. I used to think so too, but it looks increasingly likely.

 

What Scotland will be prepared/able to give up/trade for her waters and what the UK will are two different things.

 

The Fishing and oil industries matter in Scotland much more than they do in London.

[Jaffa]

quote:

---

Can we train Scotland's fish not to swim over the median line?

---

Might be worth taking a chance and finding out

 

Its always been one of the great "truths" of fisheries management that "fish don't recognise fences". Yet is it actually the case? , bearing in mind Scotland would have a bloody huge field...

 

The Bass seem to be doing a good job of avoiding French waters, mackerel seem to switch their migration in response to fishing pressure.

 

The more we learn about our fish stocks, the more we discover that many more of them are seperate stcocks and more localised than we ever realised, even sandeels of all things.

 

English anglers may well benefit from the overspill though

 

[ 29. April 2005, 09:40 AM: Message edited by: Jaffa ]

[Jaffa]

Are Bass one of the 80 species that MUST be Internationally managed?

 

[ 29. April 2005, 09:42 AM: Message edited by: Jaffa ]

[Leon Roskilly]

Jaffa:

Are Bass one of the 80 species that MUST be Internationally managed?

From recent tagging studies, seemingly not (maybe thanks to global warming).

 

Increasingly it seems that bass are now spawning inshore, and only about 20% of inshore stocks are being lost to vessels outside of the 12.

 

Which probably means that inshore netting is now having a bigger effect on our inshore bass stocks than the pair trawlers.

 

Tight Lines - leon

[Bob on Stronsay]

The way I see it is.

 

Lets blame Europe, Seals, Global warming and just about anything else other than OVER FISHING and a complete disregard for the environment, rules or the consequences.

 

 

Bob

[Guest stevie cop]

As I've said before on here, there were fish in the sea millions of years before man ever walked on the planet. They managed to survive and thrive without our help. Without our fisheries "management".

 

Man has been taking fish from the sea for millions of years also, for food. The fish still managed to survive and thrive. For millions of years this went on and there was never even so much of a dent in the fish stocks. There were so many fish in the sea that when man first started fishing the Grand Banks, they could lower a basket over the side and it would come up full of Cod. That wasn't a freak of nature, it was how things had been for millions of years. It was natural. It was how things are supposed to be.

 

Now look at what we've done. Yes, what WE'VE done. Or to be perfectly accurate, what commercial fishing has done. We are now all fighting and squabbling over the pitiful remains of what was once a never ending supply of fish. How did it happen?

 

Well, fish became a comodity. It became something to be traded like cash. Don't forget given the grand scheme of things that a few hundred years is a drop in the ocean. Fishing effort increased, methods became more efficient, commercial fishermen got more greedy. And yes Peter, there are such things as greedy fishermen! Success is something different. I don't know any successful fishermen. If fishermen were truly successful, they'd have been fishing sustainably for the last few hundred years, and they haven't been. Running fish stocks to the levels they are at now can hardly be described as "successful". To say, "we've been doing this, that or the other for 40-50 years and it hasn't got any worse", is ignorance of the highest order. The situation is dire. Anyone who disputes that fact is a fool.

 

Most of the damage has been done within the last 50 years. Yes, the vast percentage of damage has been done in a nano-second of history. What will happen over the next 10, 20 or 30 years is anyones guess, but it won't be good news. Just look at the number of juvenile fish that now make up most catches. I'm not talking undersize, I'm talking juvenile fish that we deem it O.K to take out of the sea. Just prior to the collapse of the Grand Banks, the fishermen were concerned that they were't catching the huge female Cod that had been keeping the fishery going for all those years. How can catching fish that haven't even spawned once be sustainable? How many large females, of any species, are caught now days compared to years gone by. These fish can only be caught once then that's it.

 

I find it hard to comprehend mans stupidity with regards to fish stocks. Does anyone truly believe that this can carry on indefinately? Forget the bullshit and cliches, does anyone really believe that everything is fine with fish stocks? And does anyone truly believe that commercial fishing hasn't played the major role in it's downfall?

 

Forget the last 50 years, look at the big picture and then tell me that everything is fine.

[FearTheHands]

I think you spelt "cats" wrong in the post title ...

[spanner]

wurzel,

 

You didn't answer two of my three questions. You're not a politician in your spare time are you?

 

Do you accept that some catches might be up because they are getting better at doing it rather than there actually being more fish?

 

Do you accept that some catches might be up beacuse they are new targets?

 

 

The one you did answer, about the size of haddock, had a feeling of deja-vu about it........

 

"I agree some stocks might be improved with so called sustainable metheods, but they will still survive with out it or eles they would have gone years ago."

 

So basically you're saying that as they have managed to avoid extinction this far its never going to happen. Pretty much ignoring any effect that increased killing efficiency and sustained effort might have then.

 

A bit like assuming that because the native Indian population in America had hunted buffalo with bow & arrow for thousands of years that a few years of the white man with his guns, greed and ignorance of "so called sustainable methods" would not be a problem.....nearly hunted to extinction.

 

A bit like the Passenger Pigeon that had migration flocks so big they covered the sky....hunted to extinction.

 

A bit like the Grand Banks Cod.....

 

A bit like N.Sea cod, opinion early in the 20th century was stocks so big they could never run out.

 

Oh, but I forgot, there was no decline was there, just natural variation due to climate etc, the cod went north while the haddock just got smaller.

 

 

I believe that climate change is a significant factor in the current problems, changes in plankton distribution will have an effect on the whole ecosystem, and nobody fully understands these consequences. Scientific understanding has come on tremendously in the last century, but they have still only scratched the surface of knowledge. After all it is a very complex system that has been doing its thing for millions of years.

 

The problem is, we are putting more and more pressure on the ecosystem all the time...climate change, pollution, over fishing. We need to adress all of these issues, not just one of them.

 

 

But we do know some things....it will collapse unless we change the way do things, it has happened before and it will happen again. It is not sustainable they way it is now. Can you honestly say that you know it is, or are you just hoping it is?

[Jaffa]

Seems what the SNP say, about giving fishermen more control, is also the view of some Green Party candidates too :

 

http://www.fishupdate.com/news/fullstory.p..._fisheries.html

 

Scottish Greens seek more local control over fisheries

 

27 April, 2005 -

RESPONDING to the latest figures on illegal fish landings, David Jardine, parliamentary candidate for the Scottish Green Party for Ross, Skye and Lochaber, is calling for greater local control over fisheries.

Mr Jardine said: "It has been proven all over the world that the long-term solution to the problem of illegal fishing is to give more power to local fishermen to manage their resources, but in Europe we have consistently failed to achieve this. As a result Scottish waters are being over-fished and the illegal market is flourishing.

“I estimate that the reported £80 million of illegal white-fish could be up to 40% of the total catch, which is dreadful, but as long as our fishing boats feel that they are in a free-for-all competition for fish in Scottish waters we will never get on top of the illegal fish landings.

“We need governance of our fishing that is based on sound science of fish stocks, coupled with local fishing boats empowered to fish responsibly. To achieve this will require the government to start by listening to local fishing communities. It will also require radical reform of the Common Fisheries Policy in Europe, not just tinkering around the edges, and to replace the weak Regional Advisory Groups with Regional Management Groups with real powers.”