Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-02-25-Speech-4-019"
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"en.20100225.4.4-019"2
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"Mr President, I want to appeal to Commissioner Damanaki for sensitivity to Britain in the reworking of the common fisheries policy which seeks to include recreational sea angling in the regulation and control of sea fishing.
The CFP has already wiped out most of what ought to have been a great renewable resource. Recreational sea anglers account for perhaps 1% of the total catch that remains. The Commission hesitates to protect a nearly endangered species, but sees fit to regulate fishing as a hobby. It just goes to show where the Commission’s interests lie.
I thought the whole point of quotas was to prevent diminishing stocks. European fisheries policy has been so unsuccessful in achieving sustainability that 91% of fisheries are on course to be classified as overfished by 2015.
But the problem is how waters are being fished, not by whom. Indiscriminate trawling and longline fishing empty our seas of marine life. But throwing back into the sea dead fish that have already been caught and are good for the table is surely the opposite of sustainability.
What is sustainable fishing, however, is recreational sea angling, which is enjoyed by around a million people in the UK and which supports business thought to be worth around EUR 2 billion in tackle trade alone across the continent.
Some 19 000 people are employed in some 1 300 businesses in England and Wales as a result of the recreational angling industry. Recreational sea anglers catch and remove from the sea only what they intend to eat, leaving small young fish to develop and breed, and throwing back what they do not strictly need. In some cases, they tag the fish first, contributing to conservation programmes.
If the Commission gets its way, they will be forced to land everything they catch and count their quota against the national one.
Recreational sea angling supports ecologically sound self-sufficiency which, if practised by more people, would lessen the demand that currently fuels indiscriminate commercial fishing and puts whole species of marine life under threat.
The common fisheries policy has always been prejudiced against the British fleet, which is currently permitted to fish only 7% of the Channel cod quota and only one fifth of the quota in our own territorial waters.
Perhaps the Commissioner will see fit to favour the needs of harmless recreational fishermen in the UK in the same way as her predecessor showed open sensitivity to the needs of his own country’s fishermen when he opposed a ban on the sale of bluefin tuna, an industry that earned EUR 100 million a year for his country, Malta."@en1
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