The Scottish Fishermen’s Federation has said that good progress is being made in fish stock recovery.
Chief Executive Bertie Armstrong spoke before the WWF “More Fish in the Sea” event at the Scottish Parliament today. He said, “Thanks to innovation, commitment and real grinding sacrifice from the Scottish industry amongst others, remarkably good progress in the right direction has hallmarked the condition of our main target stocks over the decade since the last CFP reform.”
He warned however, that the public have not been given a balanced message on the status of stocks and have received instead “a diet of excessive gloom using generalised global worst-case statistics”
He said that this generates “an unwarranted presumption against fishing”. Instead, he said, the industry should celebrate its success and redouble joint efforts to get the present reform of the Common Fisheries Policy to deliver the means of continued progress.
“There is certainly work still to be done, but it will be best provided by this reform delegating management to where it will be most effective – here at the regional level,” he said.
He referred to the conference held in Fishmongers’ Hall in London last week, which was attended by Maria Damanaki and fisheries scientists. Professor Ray Hilborn of Washington University noted that there was a greater availability of fish for human consumption than was generally supposed and for a lot of fisheries yield could actually be increased, Mr Armstrong said.
Mr Armstrong added: “There had been a projection in 1998, based on the trophic level of landings, that all large fish used for direct human consumption would have disappeared by 2048. However, a re-analysis of the data showed that the trophic level of catches was actually increasing.”
