UK fishermen suffered another setback last month when a new report called for a third of UK waters to become marine reserves closed to all commercial fishing.
The study, carried out by the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution (RCEP), warns that the whole ecosystem is in danger, and not just threatened individual fish stocks, such as cod or haddock. Turning The Tide, Addressing the Impact of Fisheries on the Marine Environment warns that society has given far less priority to marine conservation than to protecting the land.
Currently less than 0.5 per cent of the oceans are protected but some countries such as New Zealand and South Africa aim to designate 10-20 per cent of their waters as reserves. The RCEP is calling for the UK to adopt a "decommissioning scheme to reduce the capacity of the UK fishing fleet to an environmentally sustainable level, and ensure similar reductions are made in EU fleets that fish in UK waters."
In response to the report, the Sea Fish Industry Authority (Seafish) has released a statement calling for consumers to continue eating fish. According to Seafish "95 per cent of the cod we eat in the UK comes from outside the North Sea and over 70 per cent of the seafood that we consume in the UK is sourced on a worldwide basis."
Seafish says that a number of conservationist measures have already been introduced in the last three years, such as a 4 per cent reduction of the Scottish whitefish fleet and hundreds of marine protected areas established around the UK coasts.
It also says that stocks are showing signs of recovery but the "radical recommendations of the RCEP report to close down much of the UK coastline would have a devastating impact on the fishing industry and the communities that rely on it." According to the Seafish statement, stocks of herring and shellfish are healthy and stocks of haddock are at a 30 year all time high. The report came at a delicate time, when the European Commission is discussing the 2005 fish quotas and long-term strategies to rebuild stocks. As World Fishing went to press talks were still going on in Brussels but recommendations were already on the way for depleted cod stocks with further restrictions on fishing effort, mostly through closed areas.
