While our government feebly pleads…

nick cowen, 20 November 2007

…our fishing industry slips into crisis.
The European Union’s Fisheries Commission places strict quotas on fishing in the North Sea, areas that were previously sovereign British territory. The purpose of this policy is to encourage fish stocks to recover from over fishing that previously took place because of the free for all policy that allowed several European countries to access the same waters. The perverse result is that between 40 and 60 per cent of all fish caught have to be thrown back dead into the sea, leaving us with the worst of all worlds: a growing environmental crisis as fish stocks fail to be replenished and a crippled fishing industry. This policy is no good, either for today’s fisherman or tomorrow’s consumer.

The government’s answer is to push the European Union to up the legal quota for British fishing ever so slightly, which is hardly going to deal with the underlying problem of wasting half of all the fish caught in our waters, as demanded by this bureaucratic diktat. While fishermen are apt to catch all they can if they can get away with it in the short term, it is the perverse consequences of EU policy that leads to this colossal, immoral, waste. Tweaking the dials on the policy machine that prints out EU fishing permits is hardly going to tackle that.
What is most troublesome, however, is the way this issue is narrated in the mainstream media. The BBC bring up the problems that the fishing industry faces, brings on the government for their feeble EU supplicating response, then in opposition to quotas they bring on Greenpeace who think that fishing needs to be scrapped altogether. It is as if the only option for dealing with scarcity is a baroque international bureaucracy or an authoritarian ban on production of a major food source!
Couldn’t people imagine for a minute why we manage to continue through crisis after crisis of farming, including major culls, without ever coming across a supposed shortage of beef, lamb or poultry? Could it possibly be because farms, despite constant government intervention, are privately owned and that farmers have both the ability and incentive to maintain their animal stock at a level suitable for consumer?
What is the difference between this situation and fishing? Unfortunately, in the case of fishing, any major attempt to develop fish stocks could be instantly negated by one or two Spanish fishing trawlers popping into the territory and breaking their quota on the healthy shoals. What in farming would be theft, in fishing is an accounting error! This leaves very little incentive for the British fishing industry to save our stocks for the future which is bad for the consumer and bad for the environment. Instituting a system based on transferable rights to fish over a given territory, would mean those with the right to fish today, would also have the incentive to fish in a sustainable manner so that they can continue to exploit their resources in the future and so as not to depreciate their valuable asset.
Indeed if Greenpeace felt they were best placed to protect these assets, they would be at liberty to take a break from ramming ships in order to buy up some of these fishing rights for themselves perfectly legitimately with no intention of using them.
As a seminar I recently attended explained, there is no principle reason why resources held in the sea could not, with a few technological innovations, be best exploited in the same way as on land. If the EU was more accountable, or fishing was removed from the EU as a competency, we could find a far superior way of managing fish scarcity through such innovative systems. As it stands, however, all the government can do is go cap in hand for a little extra piece of what used to be our fish resources.