Petition to withdraw from CFP

[Jaffa]

Winter, I always assumed it was impossible but i know damn all about the legal side of this. They seem to think they have a case anyway.

 

Few others may share this view but I honestly believe that having fishermen running things would be much better. At the moment its a common resource, abused because its in no groups interest to think ahead. Why bother when you have no control and nothing you do will effect the outcome? If you don't take it the next guy will. Human nature.

[Jaffa]

Ian, it was just the 10k tonnes Cod quota, no doubt from a year when the quota was very low.

[Guest jay_con]

I see your point jaffa and you may well be right. My only experience of fishermen however is one of gread.

[Jaffa]

Greed, if thats what you want to call it is surely something that should be expected and therefore managed. At the moment we have the crazy situation where we take one decison in the North Sea that ends up with 15 lean mean Peterhead pair teams fishing the channel for Bass. All that hard work on bass in danger. Zero joined up thinking and thats the way its been for decades now.

 

[ 04. February 2005, 01:12 PM: Message edited by: Jaffa ]

[spanner]

Jaffa,

 

It was the cod crusaders that sent me that link. I had seen their aim to pull out of the CFP on their website, but no mention of what next.

 

They also sent me this link:

www.savebritfish.org.uk

 

I'm just trying to get a feel for what they really want. I think that a sustainable fishery with minimal environmental impact should be what they want, after all its in their best long term interests, just like ours. If its not we need to try and bring them round to that idea.

 

There may be some greedy ones who just want everything for themselves and don't give a damn about anybody else, it may be the majority, I don't know, but if we can find commercial folks with the 'right attitude' we should try and work with them.

 

We cannot afford to continue with mistrust and hatred on both sides, a them and us attiude, just look where that got Gerry and RevIan in NI. There has to be co-operation and compromise or it will fail.

 

The fact that they acknowledge us stakeholders is a start.

[Ian Burrett]

I read somewhere that it would be illegal under Eu policy to pull out of the CFP. If that is so, then the only solution would be for Britain to pull out of Europe, and that opens up a totally different can of worms.

[Leon Roskilly]

There's a feeling amongst the commercial industry that there's plenty of fish out there to be caught, if only we were allowed to, and that the CFP is out to destroy the British fishing fleet so that 'ourt' fish can be shared out amongst other nations.

 

That the CFP hasn't worked in the past is indisputable (but if there had simply been a free for all, things could have been a lot worse now!)

 

And since the reform of the CFP last year a lot of things are being done differently; area closures and effort limitation instead of quotas etc.,

 

But at the end of the day we are in a situation where 'conservation' means killing less fish, and fishermen make money out of killing fish, so they are not happy with any restrictions.

 

Would leaving the CFP work?

 

Well, the problem is that fish stocks move around, and around 80 of our species would need to be subject to international conservation agreement. Like it or not, they are mostly Europen fish, not British fish, moving freely around in European waters.

 

Would our fishermen be prepared to accept a much higher MLS than that imposed by the EU, if that prevented us catching fish which would be taken up by the EU fleet as soon as it crossed the Median line?

 

(This is the problem with purely local management. We have experience of SFCs agreeing that they would like to see a bigger mls for bass, but feeling that they could not ask their fishermen to let the bass grow bigger when other fishermen are taking them outside the area at a smaller size - there needs to be some national/international agreements for mobile stocks. Local management may work for shellfish, but not so well for fin fish)

 

Would we have a powerful voice in negotiating fishing rights etc over stocks that we share, or would we be a lone voice arguing against the combined voice of other European nations?

 

A number of Independent studies have come to the conclusion that it would be better to stay within the reformed CFP and combine our energies in getting it right, rather than using our time negotiating a withdrawal, then negotiating with the diminished CFP nations over management measurs.

 

And then the prevailing opinion is that we could only come out of the CFP by leaving the EU.

 

Let's get a sense of proportion.

 

Even the lawn mower industry is bigger than the fishing industry (according to ex-fisheries minister John Gummer).

 

We ain't gonna come out of the EU, just so that we can come out of the CFP, nor are we going to negotiate away many other agreements that depend upon our agreements over fisheries.

 

The SACN view, when we have met politicians from different parties, has been that the decision to whether or not to pull out of the CFP (or the EU) is a political decision, and not something that we support or oppose in itself.

 

Whether in or out of the CFP, we want to see in place practical and realistic policies that will significantly increase the number and size of fish available to recreational anglers.

 

Tight Lines - leon

[Guest jay_con]

lol of course the lawn mower business is bigger. We all have grass to cut.. Nice one Leon I like that .

 

Plus some very good points made about the cfp. For me the only reason they want out the cfp is so they can catch more fish and make more money. in the long run that has to be bad as there will be no fish left .

[Leon Roskilly]

spanner:

 

The fact that they acknowledge us stakeholders is a start.

I've not seen a shred of evidence that anyone in the fishing industry sees us as stakeholders.

 

In fact they seem to hate the very idea.

 

Those acknowledging our rights to be treated as stakeholders and rights to representation are those in government and to a lesser extent in fishery management, much to the alarm of many netsmen and their representatives.

 

Tight Lines - leon

[Guest stevie cop]

Another classic example of manipulating figures to suit.

 

RSA takes 10,000 tons of fish each year, but most of those fish are probably undersize, and get thrown back alive. The British Cod quota is 10,000 tons they say, but what is the actual tonnage caught in nets including discards? No one knows.