More Support to Ban Supertrawlers

Interesting read here from yesterday, more support gaining for our fishing industry from celebrities, organisations such as Green Peace and MPs.

Joanna Lumley, Michael Palin, Green Peace and 72 MP's including Raab, Corbyn, Lucas and co, all calling for the outright ban on super trawlers from UK waters.

This will be part of the PFA (Pelagic Freezer Trawler Association) campaign to outlaw beam and pulse beam fishing as well, no doubt.


https://inews.co.uk/news/environment...d-areas-574862

Re: More Support to Ban Supertrawlers

Sorry dude, you're a bit behind. The guardian reported this on june 11 (https://www.theguardian.com/environm...protected-seas).
I would be all for banning supertrawlers, although you brits will have a hard fight, keeping the russians out (15 of the 25 are russian owned).
But banning bottom dredging? That's what your british fishers have been doing for almost two centuries. Do you want to rob your fellow men from their income, just because greenpeace says so!

Re: More Support to Ban Supertrawlers

Well, "dude", yes this has been an ongoing story for some time but I think Bread posted the latest as many high profile people were supporting the ban.

You might find this of interest, especially the bit about the highly controversial Dutch method of Pulse trawling.

https://britishseafishing.co.uk/pulse-trawling/

https://britishseafishing.co.uk/comm...shing-methods/

Re: More Support to Ban Supertrawlers

This is how the Dutch justify their illegal fishing.

The lies are breathtaking - note the EU flag in the top left of the frame


https://www.bing.com/videos/search?v...i%252FSy0ONaZw

Re: More Support to Ban Supertrawlers

Ongoing? You can say that again!

I believe there is not a portion of the ground but what the trawl destroys," explained G*Cormack, a fisherman from Torry, Aberdeen. "I have dragged 50 miles off Aberdeen. I have got fast there and brought up coral about 2.5ft*in circumference, lumps of soft coral, and I am prepared to say that whatever is in the way of the trawler will not escape."

It is a stark description of the damage inflicted by "bottom trawling", the practice of dragging heavily weighted nets across the seafloor to sweep up fish – like cod and haddock – that thrive there. And it is all the more alarming for having been voiced almost 150 years ago. Cormack was giving evidence in 1866 to a royal commission on the impact of bottom trawling, which expanded massively in British waters from the beginning of the 19th century. Traditional fishers opposed bottom trawling, not just because they thought it damaged the seabed by ripping up coral, oyster beds and sponges, but because they believed it wiped out fish stocks. "Twenty years ago, we used to get 600 or 700 a head of fish a day," said another*commission*witness, B*Simpson, a line-fisherman who worked off Spurn Point, Grimsby. "Now they cannot get above 20 head, or three or four score at the outside."

At the hearings, hundreds*of others*gave evidence, most of them damning in their views of bottom trawling, as is revealed in a*recent paper by York University's Ruth Thurstan, Julie Hawkins and Callum Roberts in the journal Fish and Fisheries. The evidence was to no avail, however, for the commission decided Britain could not afford to block bottom trawling and so decreed that "unrestricted freedom of fishing should be permitted". The fishing industry lobby in Victorian times was clearly no less powerful then than it is today.
https://www.theguardian.com/environm...empty-the-seas

Re: More Support to Ban Supertrawlers

Fish are not sustainable when you destroy their natural habitat when you use methods such as beam trawling and pulse beam trawling. It makes no difference who does it if they are UK fishermen, Dutch, French, Belgian, Danish, German or Spanish. It's just wrong.

I fished Frinton about 3 years ago with my friend for sole on a rising tide down by the golf club (the huts on stilts as we call it).

We had decent sole up to about 2 to 3lb and as we were fishing, along came a beam trawler at about 500 yards, running lights off, engines quiet and cleared the whole shoreline up of sole (and anything else that got caught up in the nets). The commercials watch the fishing catch reports on web sites such as WSF and Sea-Fishing.org then set out to clear out what is fishing well even though it's illegal (hence the running lights off and the slow engines).

That fishing spot hasn't recovered since then - what was a great fishing spot for recreational sea anglers is now barren.

Don't get me wrong, I also have a huge problem with UK commercial fishermen - they are as much to blame for illegal fishing as everyone else. I've heard first hand the stories of secret compartments to hide over-quota fish, the transfer of catch out at sea to other vessels so they can get around the rules etc etc and, what happens at sea, kind of stays at sea if you know what I mean.

The thing is, that outside the CFP we can press the reset button and have rules that are based on conservation and sustainability rather than the stupid quota system / discards the idiots in Brussels came up with.

Already the UK fleet are protesting because it's being put forward that CCTV is mandatory on all landing areas on fishing vessels and can be inspected on request. It's rules like this that we could never make before because we haven't been in control of our own territorial waters since we joined the Common Market. When we are out of the EU completely, there will be some big changes ahead if and banning beam trawlers, super trawlers, pulse beam fishing etc will be just the start.

Re: More Support to Ban Supertrawlers

And then climate changes and fish migrate north, to norwegian and icelandic waters.....

Re: More Support to Ban Supertrawlers

By December ?

Re: More Support to Ban Supertrawlers

Promise you won't tell. That's santaclaus. Cod and haddock leave the british waters by 2040. At the time you don't have to pay the EU no more for the 2020 withdrawal.

Re: More Support to Ban Supertrawlers

Good post Bread ! I particularly liked the bit about applying the
new enviromental laws to the british trawlermen as well as other
countries fishermen!?
Like you l also believe that supertrawlers and corperate owned
fishing companies should be heavily restricted if not completely
banned from our waters ?
The emphasis should be on small local boats to help our coastal
communities re-develop?

Donkeyman! 👍👍👍