Speaking ahead of a conference on the reform of the Common Fisheries Policy that will he held in Edinburgh this week where the issue of discards will be a key topic for discussion, Bertie Armstrong, Scottish Fishermen’s Federation chief executive, said: 'We are all agreed that discards are abhorrent and the reason why it occurs must be a mystery to the public. But if there were a simple solution, then we would have solved the problem a long time ago.
'Regrettably, there is no easy solution. Discarding is the most visible symptom of a set of rules that cannot cope with mixed fisheries such as those found in the North Sea. It is the rules that are the disease because quotas set for single species such as cod and whiting do not match what ends up in the nets.
'The industry has been making changes and sacrifices to be as selective as possible by working with government on selective gear and on closed areas in response to aggregations of fish which should not be caught – there have been 120 such closures this year. Whilst we are nowhere near a complete solution, credit must be given to the industry for progress made so far, and government focus must be to work with the industry to change the rules to cope intelligently with mixed fisheries. Only then will there be a solution to discarding.'
Should fisheries be closed during breeding time to allow stocks to reach more sustainable levels?
