UK fisheries minister Richard Benyon has decided to significantly reduce the netting of salmon and sea trout off the North East Coast, a decision welcomed by the Angling Trust.
The decision will continue to phase out drift net fishing through a reducing order and will begin phasing out beach (T/J) nets.
The removal of these nets have been campaigned for for many years because campaigners say they take fish returning to a large number of rivers indiscriminately (known as ‘Mixed-Stock Fisheries’ (MSF)). Such exploitation is regarded as bad practice by the North Atlantic Salmon Conservation organisation (NASCO) and the International Council for the Exploration of the Seas (ICES).
Because salmon and sea trout nearly always return to the river where they were born, Mixed-Stock Fisheries prohibit management of each river’s population of fish. Commercial fishermen in Greenland and the Faroes, where most salmon from UK rivers go to spawn, have also been questioning why they should continue to refrain from exploiting the stocks in their waters when the UK government has been licensing a Mixed Stock Fishery to operate in UK waters. The Angling Trust says that this decision is an important contribution to progress towards sustainable fisheries management throughout the Atlantic.
Mark Lloyd, chief executive of the Angling Trust and Fish Legal said: “We warmly welcome this announcement and applaud the Minister and the Secretary of State for taking the right decision to protect and improve fish stocks. This will have great benefits for the angling industry, which employs thousands of people and is a vital part of the rural economy of the UK.
“This is an important victory not just for the fish that were caught in these nets, but for the entire management of populations in the Atlantic. The continuation of this commercial fishery risked the restart of mixed-stock netting in Greenland and the Faroes which would have been disastrous for many salmon stocks in the UK.”
