NORTH SEA FISH CRISIS - part 2

MANAGEMENT FAILURE

The 'management' of fisheries in the North Sea is a total disaster. The problem originated with the managers who set up the policy in the 1970s. They were not biologists, and they ignored biological advice and scientific warnings that the sea was being overfished. Instead, the managers thought the problem was simple; the EU imported too many fish. In their eyes the solution was equally simple - catch more fish! The result was that from the 1970s until the early 1990s the main thrust of policy was to build new ships and modernise old ones, even though it was known that the fish stocks were heavily overexploited and that less fish, not more, would be caught by fishing more intensively.

By the late 1980s it was obvious that fish stocks were declining. But, because decisions to reduce catches would be politically difficult, significant reform was continually put off. As the situation got worse, the extent of the necessary measures grew more severe, even further discouraging action. As a result, what was supposed to be a major reform of the CFP in 1992 did no more than tinker at the margins.

"Up until now, ministers have always thought it expedient to take the short-term answer and that means if you can get away with increasing the quotas for this year the pressure is taken off your back. Then it is somebody else's problem next year." Lord Selbourne, House of Lords - Fish Stock Conservation and Management.

To make matters even worse, the system of regulating national catches - that of setting a Total Allowable Catch (TAC) for individual species - was, and is, absurd. Once again managers ignored biological reality; in this case that many fish, such as the cod family (cod, haddock, whiting, saithe), and herring and sprat, swim together in mixed shoals. The result is that when the quota for one species is reached these fish are dumped over the side (or sold on the black market) while fishing continues for those species where the quota has yet to be reached. This compounds yet another problem; that, as the stocks have been run down, vast numbers of immature fish are being caught. Where these are less than the minimum size that can legally be landed, these too are discarded. Either way the effect is disastrous - under natural circumstances, and even in a well regulated fishery, fish such as cod would breed many times before they die. But at present, fish such as cod are caught by the time they are 2-3 years old, by which time they will have been lucky to have bred once.

"The outlook is very bleak. Frankly, we've never been here before, and we don't know how long we can sustain viable fishing stocks, or indeed whether the marine ecosystem will allow stocks in the future ever to recover to previous levels." Dr Horwood, Deputy Director MAFF, Marine Laboratory, Lowestoft, England (October 1995).

In response to these problems, there has been increasing noises from fisheries managers both about the need to reduce fishing pressure and to take account of the wider ecological effects. In practice the only significant attempt to take action has been through decommissioning of fishing vessels. But even this limited action has been a failure. Some countries, such as the UK and the Netherlands, have not even met the agreed targets, and in all countries it tends to be the older, less effective, vessels that are taken out of circulation. Due to advances in technology the net effect of decommissioning on fishing capacity has been minimal, as even the European Commission concedes.

POLITICAL WEAKNESS

The ultimate irony is that the cost of the necessary reforms would be covered by the increased profitability of the fishing industry. According to Mike Holden (head of EC fisheries 'Conservation' section from 1984 to 1990) , the compensation costs of bring fishing capacity into line with what the sea can sustain, throughout the European Union, would have been around 3 billion ECU (2 billion sterling) in 1992, spread over 5 to 10 years. But if the stocks were well managed the annual profits would increase to between 0.66 - 2 billion ECU (1-3 billion sterling).

The problem is not the economics. It is simply the lack of political will to radically overhaul fisheries management in Europe. What is clear is that we simply cannot afford 'not' to act. We already have a terrible warning from the collapse of the Canadian Northern cod fishery. This was once the largest cod fishery in the world. Even in decline, in the late 1980s it provided about 30,000 jobs in Newfoundland and Labrador, and a catch in 1989 of 235,000 tonnes that had a landed value of 140 million Canadian dollars, and a product value of some 350 million.

Faced with conflicting scientific advice about the need to reduce fishing drastically, politicians decided to hope for the best, and take minimal action. The stock collapsed and with it went the jobs and the money. Too late, in 1992, a moratorium was introduced. The result has been enormous social, economic and environmental costs, and the cod stock shows no sign of recovering.

"If you manage close to the edge, as is being done in the North Sea, and you have many fishermen out there with modern equipment, you make one mistake and one over- estimate and you catch them all. In the North Sea, it's not if a disaster will occur, but simply when a disaster will occur." Dr Ransom Myers, Dept of Fisheries, Canada. ]

There is now a very real chance that such collapses will happen in the North Sea, with similar ecological, social and economic consequences. Evidence, such as that from the War years when fishing effort dropped, and of the herring stock recovery in the 1970s, suggests that stocks can recover if action is taken soon enough. The North Sea mackerel, and the Canadian cod, warn of the consequences of leaving action too late. We do not have the luxury of waiting until 2002, when the next major review of the Common Fisheries Policy is due to take place. Action is needed NOW.

GREENPEACE DEMANDS Greenpeace wants governments to use another emerging approach to fisheries to keep fish stocks at safe levels and reduce environmental impacts of by fishing. The precautionary approach is now well established in international law. Put simply, it places the burden on the fishing industry to prove their fishing activities are not likely to pose a substantial risk to the environment. To bring back depleted fish stocks and conserve the marine environment, massive reductions to the billions of fish killed each year during fishing of all North Sea fish stocks is needed. Once this happens, the increase in size and age of the fish stocks will allow fishing to become more profitable and predictable, while taking less of the stocks. Greenpeace demands implementation of a precautionary approach to fisheries as an over-arching principle of European fisheries management. While governments implement this long-term approach, they must also address the more short term crisis facing the North Sea. All North Sea fisheries need an emergency recovery plan. This plan must increase all threatened stocks such as cod, plaice and herring to levels that are safely above the minimum sustainable stock biomass, and it must cut the number and size of fishing vessels to bring fishing capacity into line with the available resources. Greenpeace demands that North Sea fisheries and environment ministers agree an emergency recovery plan for North Sea fisheries when they meet in March 1997 at their Interim Ministerial Meeting (IMM). Because if they fail to act, North Sea fisheries could be heading the same way as cod off eastern Canada.