Green bogeyman to gut industry? By John Robertson reproduced by kind permission of The Shetland Times

Friday 12th July 1996

Forget the Spaniards. Never mind the Euro-civil war, the fisherman's new bogeyman will be his most formidable yet - the greens are coming.

If the latest doomsday predictions prove correct fishermen can bid farewell to their occupation, because as far as the environmentalists are concerned, the game is up.

"In my view the single biggest threat facing the fishing industry is the environmentalists," said Shetland Fishermen's Association secretary John Goodlad. "The environmentalists are now setting the agenda in the UK and in Europe."

Some of the new demands are drastic: to avoid imminent disaster many mainstay fisheries will have to be closed. Fishermen will be paid to pack up until stocks recover. Boats left in the fleet will be forced to become less good at catching fish - not bigger and better ever again. Fishing as it is know it today will be discarded into the rubbish bin of history.

Mr Goodlad has been thinking ahead and he has become "extremely worried". "Their concern is for fish and not for fishermen." It is his latest saying. Prepare to hear it often over the next few years.

Cut ordered

The aggressive confrontation between Greenpeace and mainly Danish fishermen over sandeels east of Edinburgh is set to be the first of many sea battles between the greens and North Sea fishermen.

Mr Goodlad is very worried about where it is all going to lead: "The less responsible elements of the environmental movement are basing their whole campaign on their moral agenda. That moral agenda is very often set in the cities of Britain, Germany and Europe where folk in well-paid jobs have an idealistic view of life in the countryside and what the fishing industry is like. They don't actually have to live in a place like Shetland. They don't actually have to see how on earth can you create jobs in Shetland especially when the oil industry goes."

Now it is being claimed that the greens already have allies within. Fishermen and their leaders are increasingly concerned by the tone of the statements emanating from officials and politicians in Brussels.

Fishermen are beginning to wonder if the EC fisheries division DGXIV has anybody in it who is working for them. They certainly do not think Fisheries Commissioner Emma Bonino is on their side. "Bonino is the commissioner for the environment as well as for fisheries. I would like to know which she regards as the most important aspect of her brief," said Mr Goodlad.

It is cold comfort too that the ex-UK fisheries minister John Gummer is now the UK's environment minister, he said.

He believes the environmental lobby is behind not just the minimum 40 per cent fleet cut ordered recently but this week's plan to force fishermen to use huge 110 millimetre square mesh nets which will catch nothing but the biggest fish in the sea.

But it is next year when the guts will really hit the deck. Fourteen of the more-reserved international green groups have compiled a fat report called Seas at Risk for the North Sea Conference in Bergen which, if it makes headway with EC environment ministers, will change the life of Shetland fishermen forever.The pressure group includes the Marine Conservation Society of the UK and Friends of the Earth International.

Chief among their demands are an emergency meeting of the Council of Fisheries Ministers to temporarily close at least the North Sea cod, herring and plaice fisheries and impose tough restrictions on fisheries which take those species as a bycatch.

They demand an urgent comprehensive review of the Common Fisheries Policy to radically alter the basic philosophy of fishing. The so-called "precautionary approach" which has been gathering vogue involves the fishing industry having to prove that it is not destroying stocks or the marine ecosystem - rather than the other way round.

The fleet would be cut drastically to a level to suit the most vulnerable stocks. Total allowable catches and quotas would be done away with, discards banned, destructive fishing gear banned or barred in certain areas.

All fishing boats would be tracked via transponders and all the EU's fishing vessels would be policed by one Euro-force.

All industrial fisheries in areas that support important wildlife populations would be closed immediately and permanently and the other industrial fisheries strictly controlled.

No alternative

The much-feared 40 per cent cut in fleet size and loss of 55,000 fishermen "would not be sufficient to guarantee against a stock collapse or wider ecosystem damage," warns Seas at Risk.

"There is only one way to be certain of securing the most depleted stocks and that is to stop fishing them, either entirely or to a very great extent. This may take the form of a fishery's temporary closure or perhaps the introduction of mesh sizes designed to leave all but the most mature fish in the sea," the document states.

"Whichever option is chosen, fisheries managers will have to find the money to compensate fishers and help fishing communities through the dislocation that will inevitably result. This is not an option that anyone would normally choose, but for some stocks there is now no alternative."

But Seas at Risk is also quite positive in its desire to free those fishermen who are left from the absurdities of the present quota system, to secure the jobs that remain, to improve their catches and their value. Lighter, more controlled fishing would help end the worryingly unpredictable nature of fishing businesses, it is claimed.

Mr Goodlad said he thought the Bergen conference next year would be dominated by the environmental lobby and he could see "some swingeing measures" coming out of it.

Greenpeace is now extremely active on the North Sea fisheries front. It has spent several years researching and preparing its case for drastic action. Four documents have recently been seen by The Shetland Times. They are typically well-argued and blunt in their demands.

Greenpeace shares many of the same radical ideas as Seas at Risk and argues that we cannot afford to wait until the next major review of the CFP in 2002 to take action.

Commercial extinction

The group states that 2.45 million tonnes of fish were caught in the North Sea in 1994 with over one million tonnes made up of industrial fish.

It is stark in its warnings of a North Sea version of the cod disaster on the east coast of Canada which destroyed the livelihoods of 30,000 people.

It also favours the "precautionary approach" which it sees as a means of preventing damage - not trying to repair it after mistakes, as occurs at present. It demands that such a system be in place within 10 years and an emergency recovery plan for the short term for all North Sea fisheries must be agreed next year.

Greenpeace adds haddock, mackerel, hake, saithe and whiting to the list of North Sea stocks at risk of commercial extinction. It is also very concerned about the effect of trawls and dumped fish on the marine environment.

The group calls for no more subsidies to be given to fishermen who want to expand.

In one press release last month Greenpeace called on fish traders and processors to stop buying North Sea herring.

It remains to be seen what direct action Greenpeace might take if its demands are ignored by politicians.

Fishermen always maintain that they are the best natural conservationists because it is their future at stake. And the SFA's relationship with Greenpeace has been good so far. They talk. They understand each other. They have some common goals. "Our job is to look after the fishermen and we can't do that unless we look after the fish," Mr Goodlad said. Emotionally-charged

Indeed, Shetland enjoys a special place in Greenpeace folklore due to its role in supporting last year's Brent Spar victory. It was even a Lerwick fishing boat, the Starina, which took the campaigners out on reconnaissance missions to the floating oil storage structure before they occupied it.

Mr Goodlad said the industry was "more than happy" to sit down with environmentalists to try to thrash out what is best for the future. But only if ideas do not get whacky and out of control.

The SFA has a good relationship with Scottish Natural Heritage too. Oddly enough the Government environmentalists share the same building.

But Mr Goodlad feels a "frustrating and saddening" gap opening up with other groups who he believes, should be saying the same kind of things as the fishermen.

"There is no group of folk going to be more affected by overfishing than the fishermen. The professional environmentalist at the end of the day won't be affected. He will move onto another campaign."

Previous emotionally-charged campaigns have demonized the peoples of harsh remote communities who for centuries have hunted whales, seals and other mammals. "That whole swathe of world opinion is being focused against two or three folk in the Lofoten Islands who are trying to catch 300 whales," he said.

He claims the environmentalists "pay no regard whatsoever to those folk trying to make a living there" and believes that merry hell would break loose if Shetland fishermen pushed their desire for a seal cull.

"You would never win that argument because the seal is the same as the whale: It's become a symbol of the environmental movement and that shows what we are up against," said Mr Goodlad.

As Shell discovered last year over Brent Spar, it would be extremely foolish to ignore the persuasive power of Greenpeace and the myriad other environmental groups. Now it seems that fish-killers are the new target.

Catastrophic

"There is a very romantic, urban-centred idealistic view of the marine environment and they can speak very glibly of closing the North Sea.because it fits into the moralistic agenda. But for folk that have to live in a place like Shetland it would be catastrophic."

Without doubt the days of industrial fishing are numbered. Nobody, it seems can justify the catching of more than one million tonnes of tiny North Sea fish for oil and meal. They are either the foodstuff of bigger fish or would have grown into bigger, valuable fish themselves - if they had escaped the nets long enough.

nstead they become anonymous products for humans and livestock in margarine, biscuits and animal feed.

Mr Goodlad said the SFA is against fisheries like those prosecuted by Norway and Denmark for Norway pout and sprats which, as a bycatch, kill immature cod, haddock and herring. "That's an absolute scandal. You are decimating the stocks from which mature fish come," he said.

But there are two other types of industrial fishery which he does not want to see banned. Catching sandeels is fine, he maintains, as long as it is properly controlled - like the 3000 tonne Shetland sandeel fishery which is now something of a model North Sea fishery with only small boats fishing for a short part of the year and closely monitored.

He says it is "one of the most regulated fisheries in the whole North Sea at the moment." It did not use to be until it was blamed for not helping the collapse of seabird breeding in Shetland in the 1980s. Back in 1982 a total of 52,000 tonnes was taken around Shetland.

Shetland men were also players in the destructive Norway pout fishery of the 1970s but he said the SFA had had "a good and long record of being totally opposed to industrial fisheries with a bycatch".

"The world has moved on," Mr Goodlad said. "We will never return in Shetland to a situation we had in the 1980s where you could catch as much sandeels as you wanted. We recognise that the fishery will always now be controlled by quota." He agrees with Greenpeace that the Wee Bankie sandeel fishery off Edinburgh should be controlled at times of the year when a bycatch of small herring is being taken. But he objects to their tactics against the fishermen and the use of what he called "highly-charged slogans" such as the "hoovering" of fish.

Where Greenpeace and John Goodlad part company on action to be taken on industrial fisheries is on the question of "clean" fisheries for the likes of blue whiting and the new Atlanto-Scandian herring fishery, neither of which has ready markets for human consumption. But at least they do not accidentally catch other species.

Of this year's Atlanto-Scandian fishery he said: "It was properly controlled. What's wrong with that? Greenpeace will say it is because it is being converted to fishmeal. That's because a value judgement is being placed on this - not science.

"According to the Greenpeace line, those fisheries should be curtailed. Why? They are under no threat whatsoever provided you don't take out more than you should be allowed under quota. If you don't catch them that fish willdie of old age. It's a crazy situation."

In its current campaign publicity Greenpeace has not made specific reference to those two "clean" fisheries.

"I think where the fishing industry and the environmentalists have to meet is on the question of science. Where we depart is this question of where emotion takes over."

Once the anti-sandeel fisherman campaign is over the fishermen wonder who will be next? They have endured years of feeling persecuted by government but they are used to fighting back too. The green machine presents them with a highly- skilled potential new adversary.

But Mr Goodlad is no mean communicator himself. He believes the fishing industry really needs to hone its act now and get its voice across to the consumer and the politician.

To coincide with next year's conference in Bergen, fishing organisations from all corners of Europe are hoping to mount a counter-propaganda campaign to match the inevitable media campaign by the greens.

Mr Goodlad said:"The world's media will be fed soundbite after soundbite, press release after press release of this moralistic agenda that fishermen are bad and fish are good and we must save the fish and it doesn't really matter what happens to the fishermen. There is another story that has to be told and that is the one about the fishermen and the fishing communities and what it is going to mean right from the south of Spain to the north of Norway."