Describing earlier efforts to reduce discards as ”treating a serious illness with aspirin”, Commissioner Maria Damanaki opened a recent meeting on the subject with EU fisheries ministers, MEPs and other high-level decision-makers.
In a key-note speech to the closed-door meeting in Brussels on 1 March, Damanaki pointed out that the Union is doing much worse than the global average as far as discards go: in the whitefish fishery up to half of the catch is thrown overboard, Damanaki said, adding that “in the flatfish fishery we are even talking about 70 percent of the catches being discarded”.
Most fish being thrown back do not survive.
The Commissioner continued:
“If we continue with our policy, then we will soon face a situation where the production capacity of marine ecosystems is at risk. If we continue with our policy, then discarding will erode the economic basis of our fishermen and our coastal regions will be eroded. Then fishermen and their families will pay the bill. If we continue our policy, the consumers will turn away from fish, because, sooner or later, it will receive a negative image of waste of our natural resources”.
Dismissing present measures to limit discards through technical measures as far from sufficient, Damanaki said she considered proposing a discard ban as part of the new Common Fisheries Policy (CFP).
The Commission’s CFP proposal is expected to be presented later this spring, and the new CFP will be decided next year.
“And while I say this word – discard ban – out loud, I am conscious that some of you would rather not discuss such a ban, while others already support this idea. But I need to point out to you: if we don’t tackle this problem now, it will come back to haunt us”, Damanaki contended.
She suggested a gradual approach, possibly starting with pelagic fisheries and then “a few important demersal mixed fisheries after a short phase in period”.
She left the issue open for discussions which management system to choose – effort management or a catch quota system.
After the meeting, Swedish Green MEP Isabella Lövin, a member of the European Parliament’s Fisheries Committee, told the Swedish Radio that Denmark, the UK, Germany and France “in very strong terms” advocated catch quotas instead of landing quotas, which are most common today.
“Sweden supports this, as well. I do too. Of course it’s totally insane that you can behave anyway you like out at sea, the only thing that counts being how much you land”, she said.
Denmark, France, Germany and the United Kingdom later issued a declaration that included a call for discard bans “to be gradually introduced where appropriate by changing to a system of genuine catch quotas as part of a ‘tool box’ of measures to avoid discards”.
In Great Britain, Tory MEP Struan Stevenson congratulated the Commissioner “for tackling the discards issue in such a decisive way”, while the chief executive of the Scottish Fishermen’s Federation described a ban as “a draconian step too far” and “a knee-jerk response to populist TV coverage”.
The British Channel 4 has recently run a series of programs featuring celebrity chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall under the “Fish Fight” logo, which has brought the discard issue to the fore.
“The European industry despises discards, but there must be a more sensible and coherent approach”, Bertie Armstrong told BBC.
“There is the real danger that the commissioner’s proposals will undo all the innovative work that has been carried out in recent years by the Scottish fishing fleet in reducing discards.”
Scotland’s Fisheries minister Richard Lochhead, who had angrily protested that he was not invited to the Brussels meeting – Whitehall’s Fisheries minister Richard Benyon was Britain’s sole voice – said he welcomed “that a process is finally under way to address the problem, even though it is deeply regrettable that Scottish knowledge will be lacking from this meeting”.
“My concern now is that the EU will repeat the mistakes of the past and put in place more ill-fitting and heavy-handed legislation that won’t solve the problem of discards, but make things worse”, Lochhead added.
“A blanket ban on discards wouldn’t be effective, or enforceable in any practical way, while further limits on the time boats can spend at sea only encourages high-value stocks to be targeted and caught quickly, instead of more selective measures that protect vulnerable stocks.”