CFP must not be a ‘wasted opportunity’

The new reformed CFP will set the course for the management of fisheries for the foreseeable future with the Scottish fleet currently struggling against a background of ill-fitting regulations and bureaucratic red tape, ever-increasing restrictions on catching opportunity and spiralling fuel prices.

Bertie Armstrong, SFF chief executive, says: “Over the past few years the SFF has been lobbying hard to ensure the reform of the CFP is meaningful and contains real and practical measures that ensures our fisheries are much more effectively and efficiently managed. There is still the real fear that the reform will end up as a wasted opportunity and that would be a tragedy.”

In particular the SFF is looking for much greater regional control in the way our fisheries are managed where fishermen, scientists, national governments and other stakeholders can develop management regimes on a regional scale.

“The advantages are enormous, given the complexities and vagaries of fisheries around even relatively small areas such as the British Isles,” says Mr Armstrong.

“Different solutions are required for different fisheries, rather than the blanket one-size suits all approach currently adopted. The EC has been making encouraging noises on regional management, but the concern is that the final proposals will not go far enough and will be a halfway house of smudge and comprise.”

The SFF will also be looking for assurances that the new CFP does not contain any measures that could threaten the way current fishing rights are allocated and that Scottish fishermen will always have access to stocks based on their historical fishing rights.

On the highly complex issue of discards, the EC has signalled its intent to halt the practice of discarding over the next few years. However, the SFF points out that this is an overly simplistic strategy, especially in the complex mixed fisheries that the Scottish fleet operates in.

Mr Armstrong says: “The Scottish fishing industry has made huge strides in recent years in adopting fishing methods that reduce discards and the way forward is to further adapt and refine these practices. Indeed, effective regional management and discard reduction are inextricably linked and the EC should at the very least pull back from its totally impracticable proposal to ban discards and instead give a new regional dimension to discard management.”

He added: “There needs to be a leap of faith on the part of the Commission in relinquishing enough of the control elements to allow regional management to work. If we do not have clear policy objectives, accompanied by an equally clear definition of exactly what is to be delegated, we will remain where we are with the fishing industry unable to steer itself towards full sustainability and economic success.

“The present policy of relying on the main management tools of restricted catching and restricted time at sea is not working. There needs to be a more intelligent way of managing fisheries and this includes the decentralisation of policy where regional management can produce regional solutions. Scottish fishermen are already pioneering a range of conservation initiatives and we fervently hope the new CFP will provide a real move towards a new and radical approach to fisheries management.”