Peter O'Neill pulls in the lines from around Europe to gauge whether anything will really change in the ritual, autumn examination of the fish entrails to forecast future stocks and quotas.
Michel Barnier, France's Agriculture and Fisheries minister, has not done a bad job in the last six months in his role as EU Council Presidential 'Helmsman'. Of course he has full support from the top in France, with President Sarkozy having taken an early lead to meet striking fishermen on the quays. Mr Barnier seems to have pulled in a number of his ministerial fisheries colleagues from around the EU behind France's line on fuel VAT and income support for fishermen.
Yet fish was kept off the public agenda, behind-the-scenes by tight-lipped ministers and basically avoided at press conferences at the informal agriculture and fish summit of ministers in Annecy, France. The battleground was dairy products and reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) - with not a demonstrating fisherman in sight according to WF eyes on the ground. Mr Barnier's up-front tactic however was to have a meeting (listed on the formal agenda) with leaders of some 50 French and international NGOs who mobilised several thousand people to demonstrate against the CAP and hold their own 'counter summit'.
Since Annecy, at the regular September ministers' meeting in Brussels, Mr Barnier's apparent tactical plan included an open-house, televised public chat on cod and stocks with experts. The question is whether this training regime for ministers, are going to get them fit enough to climb and conquer the dead fish mountain or be seen, very publicly, to have failed to tackle waste in a time of climbing food prices.
They need to fit to decisions if they are to defuse, by the year end, what can only be called a 'discard bomb'. The irony is that many of the catch areas off Scotland were where World War II unused munitions were also dumped and threaten many a skipper today. The very large and rusty discards 'bomb' which Scotland has brought up from the bottom of the sea and put on the table is certainly ticking.
Before defusing the dangerous figures we should recall that we have all been here before. Just under a decade ago, Estonia was getting ready with other northern fishing nations such as Poland, Riga and Latvia, to join the EU. The Estonian minister and his director general (a young management graduate who had not only worked as a deckhand but had her skipper's license) told WF there just had to be a policy to use and not discard fish. That was what little Estonia wanted to gift to EU fisheries policy. They have not been listened to. Of course the Norwegians, outside the EU, have got on with.
That said, one must not only welcome the coalition which has lined up behind Scotland's Fisheries Secretary Richard Lochhead. The Special Discards' Summit in Edinburgh on 25 September was put together by skippers, fishing associations, scientists from Scotland's Fisheries Research Services and Norwegian Government representatives. Like Lithuania, Scotland is a small country punching above its weight and now asserting its recent move to more politically autonomous decision-making across the board.
If it takes a heft across the head with a large, 12-year-old cod to make sceptics grasp the inane immorality of this scandalous situation then Peterhead skippers such as Jimmy Buchan of the Fairline or John Buchan of the Ocean Venture are the men to do it. They have taken to the TV screen, along with Charlie McBride of the Arcane, to let viewer, scientist and politicians see how much mature cod is now getting into the nets and going straight back into the water - dead. And they are doing it in mountainous seas, net losses and engine failures. In the meantime, Mr McBride also has to cope mentally with how he can pay off a 400,000 sterling fine, mentioned during the BBC TV The Trawlermen series, for landing and selling banned fish.
Scandalous waste
An official statement from the Scottish Government said that “Fishermen in Scotland are being forced to throw away up to £40 million worth of fish every year…European rules mean almost a million tonnes of fish are discarded in the North Sea every year. It means that for every North Sea cod caught and landed by Scots fishermen another has to be thrown away,” adding that it was a scandalous waste. It said Scots boats are having to dump 100,000t, worth ₤40 million.
The statement went on to quote Lochhead as saying: "Discards are bad news. Bad news for fishermen, bad news for consumers and bad news for the environment. I am appalled and frustrated at the scandalous level of waste and the economic and environmental madness discards represent. In what other industry would it be acceptable to throw away so much of what is produced? Responsible and hard-working skippers are heartbroken because they have to throw away precious fish. That is why they, like me, are determined to tackle the scourge of discards. The scale of the problem beggars belief. Crazy European regulations mean that at a time of worldwide food shortages and higher food prices at home, our fishermen are having to throw away up to £40 million worth of fish for which there is a perfectly good market. We have an obligation to act and, hot on the heels of other innovative conservation measures adopted by our fishermen, we are once again ready to take the lead in Europe. Today's summit shows there is a consensus on the need to tackle one of the biggest flaws in the Common Fisheries Policy.”
Mr Buchan of the Fairline was reported as saying “It is very frustrating for skippers and their crews when they have to discard beautiful, high-quality fish." On The Trawlermen, Mr McBride said “It's absolutely diabolical. Absolutely no sense in it whatsoever. We have to chuck it back over the side. Surely that's immoral, but to keep it aboard, that's illegal”. And his crew were as forthright: “We're catching a lot of cod now. We don't want to take cod. You can't sling a sign on the net saying 'no cod please'. It gets worse every year because the cod stocks are building up and there's more cod on the grounds - but the quotas are not coming up quick enough. So every year there is more cod being dumped,” were just some of the comments.
The fishermen seem finally to have moved into action mode on land, not just at sea. They are at least lining their data up for visual comparison with that of the scientists' models. It is the latter which are generally repeated by the NGOs for public propagation and then onto supermarket chains trying to be politically correct while buying in cheap and selling on dear. This political position has been compounded by a recent spate of articles highlighting the fact that the EU's big cash agreements with the fish-rich and fleet-poor developing countries to get EU vessels' access to their stocks, could cost these countries a lot in the long term. It is a chance for Common Sense in the Common Policy for the Common Good. Can the skippers pull it off with Mr Barnier and EC Fisheries' Commissioner Joe Borg?
