Proposals to ban bass fishing with gill nets are causing concern among fishermen in southern England, who see their livelihoods under serious threat as one of the last fisheries open to them could be closed.
The NFFO has approached UK fisheries minister George Eustice to set out the industry’s position that the proposed moratorium on gillnetting for bass should be opposed vigorously.
“Without an appropriate catch limit or viable bycatch allowance, as night follows day, this measure will result in thousands of bass discarded dead next year,” said NFFO President Tony Delahunty
“The Commission just doesn't seem to understand that bass will be caught as by-catch in gill nets, irrespective of what measures are adopted in December. This will not help to reduce fishing mortality on bass. But it will put the spotlight on discards and discard policy. And not in a good way. This is introducing regulatory generated discards at the same time the same is being phased out in other fisheries. It lacks consistency and it lacks sanity.”
He said that the Commission’s proposals are misguided and harmful, especially to the fishermen who will have to discard a vitally important part of their catch.
“It’s misguided because it will not affect fishing mortality one jot,” he said.
“Working with fishermen on spatial and temporal measures to help the avoid catching undersized bass in the first place would deliver more than headline-catching bans that are not with the paper they are written on,” he said.
“The Commission’s blunt approach has already created a discard problem in the trawl fishery where any bass caught over 1% have to be discarded. The effective ban on landing bass from vessels using gill nets will just bring this nonsense to a new level. It will be highly damaging to the many small-scale fleets around the coast of the UK.”
