At Sea:

Since April Greenpeace has monitored some 10,000 square miles of the North Sea, as part of a campaign to keep industrial fishing out of sensitive areas (map available with explanatory criteria). These areas are east of the Scottish coast and on the Danish, Dutch and German coast. Information from sea and air surveillance and from other fishermen and mariners indicates that for almost all of this period, the industrial fishing fleet has kept out of the designated zone and fishing was restricted to a handful of incursions by one or two boats lasting a few hours. In normal years, industrial fishing is intensive in these areas, and information received indicates that the fleet stayed away due to the Greenpeace presence.

Throughout May, the Greenpeace ship MV Sirius met with and delivered leaflets to more than twenty Danish, Norwegian, Faeroese and Scottish industrial fishing vessels at sea for example on the Dogger Bank and Long Forties off Aberdeen, asking them to stay out of the sensitive areas. Campaigners went on board a number of vessels to explain the reasons for the campaign. There are up to eight UK industrial fishing boats and at least 115 Danish ships engaged in the 1996 sandeel industrial fishing season.

By mid June the Danish Government was indicating that it might yield to pressure from other Governments to cut back or stop another industrial fishery (sprat, mainly in the Baltic and off the Danish North Sea coast). Information from Denmark suggested that the fishermen were now "desperate" to exploit the sandeel fishery and would arrive on the Wee Bankie.

On Saturday 22 June Greenpeace encountered three boats on the Wee Bankie. The MV Sirius conducted an action against the English vessel Omega B when it began attempting to fish on Sunday 23. From Sunday 23 to Sunday 30 June there were up to 28 boats present at one time, with 60 seen in total. Some 20 industrial fishing boats were within 3 - 6 nautical square miles at any one time. Greenpeace conducted repeated actions to try and stop them fishing, using swimmers, an inflatable boom and inflatable boats to reach and try to stop the setting (putting out) of the nets.

In this time Danish boats repeatedly fired flares, threw an explosive device into a Greenpeace boat, swung a ship into the bow of the MV Sirius, threw beer bottles, seized Greenpeace equipment, lashed out at inflatables with a knife on the end of a long pole, and tried to chase and ram the Sirius. The vessel Pernille Kim chased and threatened to sink the Sirius. At no time did Greenpeace use any form of violence in its protest, nor did it cut any of the gear of any Danish or other fishing ship.

On Sunday 30 June the Danish Fishermen's Organisation informed Copenhagen Radio that the industrial fleet would leave the Wee Bankie because the UK Fisheries Protection Agency was not giving them sufficient support by stopping Greenpeace. They added that they would return to "sink the Sirius". Shortly before this statement was broadcast, some 13 Danish boats were actively fishing in the area, and up to seven were chasing the Sirius. By mid-afternoon there were no industrial fishing boats on the Wee Bankie, and aerial surveillance showed there were none elsewhere in the Scottish sensitive areas. Since then the only sighting on the Wee Bankie has been one Danish industrial fishing boat, which was not fishing but steaming towards Denmark, on Monday.

By Sunday evening the Danish MP Kent Kirk who owns the industrial trawler Sand Kirk said that: "My information is that the Danish boats are returning because there are no more fish in the area" (Daily Telegraph 1 July). He added: "The fleet will be back, including my boat, when the fish return".

On the afternoon of Monday 1 July the Danish fisheries spokesman Nils Vikman repeated this in an interview on BBC Scotland. He was then asked: "So they're leaving the area because there aren't any sandeels. Have they caught any sandeels in the area which clearly can't sustain the fishing ?" He replied: "Well if they caught some it's ok for the environment, that's the normal occurrence in fishing and when you go to an area where you find fish and when you can't find any more fish in that area you go to another area".

He was then asked if this meant the area was overfished and said: "Well if that is the case that should have been the case for the past thirty years for each single area in the North Sea and it just happens that now is the time where the season is ending in that area for sandeels. It might we be that in three weeks time you will find plenty of sandeel in that area again".

This statement is factually wrong if for no other reason than because the sandeel fishery on the Wee Bankie started only in 1990, as is recorded in the Danish fish industry publication: "The Insignificant Sandeel" (Association of Fish Meal and Oil Manufacturers, K P Madsen).

It is not possible to say with any certainty exactly how much of the sandeel from the Wee Bankie the Danish and other industrial fishermen have taken this year because the catch landing data from Denmark is not available for about eighteen months. Nor can one say what percentage of the sandeels in the area have been taken because there are no baseline data (ie no population assessments).

What can be said with a reasonable degree of certainty is:

• The sudden departure of the industrial fishing boats on a day when they had been actively fishing certainly suggests a political decision by the fishermen, as they said in their original statement, rather than because there were no fish, as they claimed later, in which case one would have expected to see a more gradual disappearance.
• Despite the lateness of the 1996 season, the fleet stayed off the Wee Bankie much longer than normal, and was fishing there (seven days) for a much shorter time than normal, although the effort has been more intense. If all 60 vessels each landed 500 tonnes then some 30,000 tonnes may have been taken. This year was the first year that some of the boats had been to the Wee Bankie.
• It may be expected (see footnote) that sandeel numbers may increase again on the Wee Bankie and that fishers may try to return, in the next few weeks. However, on the basis of previous years, the main part of the season is now over.
• The exact long term impact of the current level of fishing cannot be ascertained but on the precautionary principle, the fishery here should be stopped and in the North Sea as a whole, strictly curtailed. The prescription of the Danish fishing spokesman, to go from place to place as stocks are depleted, is a recipe for overfishing. The present pattern in data from the Wee Bankie may reflect an overexploitation - ie catches rising and then falling but there is inadequate baseline and fishing effort data.
• This (early July) is at a peak time for feeding among breeding seabirds, for example on the Isle of May, and the activities of the industrial fishing boats will have removed large amounts of food from these birds. Sandeel can be over 90% of the food of young puffins on the Isle of May.
  Without detailed at sea and on shore studies of both birds and fish, the exact impact cannot be ascertained.
• Similarly the local whitefish will be affected, to an unknown extent, by the removal of a food species. Local fishermen assert that this is the case for example with haddock. ICES studies show that fish in this area can contain high levels of sandeel in their stomachs eg 100% in cod in the 3rd quarter in 1985, 97% 1st quarter in 1986, 65% and 75% in 1st and 3rd quarters in 1987.

Next Steps

• Now that industrial fishers have at least temporarily left the Wee Bankie, there is an immediate opportunity for Government action by the UK acting if necessary with others such as Denmark, to close sensitive areas.
• Greenpeace will continue to campaign to show the rapidly gathering support for urgent action, for example the Anglo Scottish Fish Producers' Organisation, Menzies Campbell MP Lib Dem, Fife NE, and Henry McLeish MP Lab, Fife Central, have signed the statement attached, since it appeared in The Independent on 1 July.
• Greenpeace continues to patrol the sensitive areas of the North Sea.
• Greenpeace will produce information regarding the wildlife of the Wee Bankie, for example birds, whales and dolphins. In recent weeks Greenpeace and an independent observer have recorded wildlife including 26 minke whale sightings on one day, and 200 white beaked dolphins at one time.
• Greenpeace will produce information concerning the involvement of UK vessels in industrial fishing.
• Greenpeace continues to press for a range of "emergency measures" by European Fisheries and Environment Ministers to protect the North Sea, including an end to the sprat industrial fishery which has a high herring by catch, the elimination of discards and effective elimination of bycatch in general, and substantial cuts in the catch of herring and cod. [Full details of these demands are available].

In previous years the "season" has extended over at least 4 - 6 weeks and catches were (ICES data) as follows:

1994
2nd quarter (ie April, May, June) - 33,900 tonnes
3rd quarter (ie July, August, September) - 8,100 tonnes

1993
2nd quarter (ie April, May, June) - 102,000 tonnes
rd quarter (ie July, August, September) - 27,000 tonnes

1992
2nd quarter (ie April, May, June) - 44,000 tonnes
3rd quarter (ie July, August, September) - 1,000 tonnes The "season" can be expected to result from (a) availability of sandeels to fishermen, and (b) the impact of the fishing - ie when they fish the area out, and, (c) whether the fishers then go elsewhere to exploit other stocks. Local fishermen and other authorities say that on the Wee Bankie, the "normal" season since 1990 has been in May and early June.

Sandeel are definitely present after this time: ie present in the water above the sand - most of the year they live buried in it. For example the study "Biology of Sandeels in the Vicinity of Seabird Colonies at Shetland" (Marine Laboratory Aberdeen Fisheries Report 15/93) included some research in the Wee Bankie area and for example notes underwater video recordings of sandeels shoaling from 22-26 July off the Isle of May.

Sandeel populations are made up of different age groups and fishers may be exploiting different ones at different times. Within an age class sizes may vary considerably depending on conditions for growth after spawning, eg in Shetland in July 1990 the O class (the young of the current year varied in size from 4.5cms to 10cms. There is also local movement (though no evidence for long distance migration) within and between populations and sub-populations.

FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT:

Chris Rose at 0171 865 8250
or
Phil Aikman on 0171 865 8258, fax 0171 865 8203

or write to Greenpeace, Canonbury Villas, London N1 2PN.