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PRAWN landings into the North-east of Scotland have been described as at their poorest level for some time.
One industry spokesman said that the prawn fishery had literally “gone off “with a prawn shortage more acute than normal at this time of year. The present shortage had lasted for at least two months, he said.
The lack of prawns into Fraserburgh for example, comes at a time when an attempt is still being made to find a solution to the issue of juvenile cod catches in prawn nets, although the claim was made to fishnewseu.com today that in fact, there are very few prawn vessels landing any quantity of cod.
One fisherman said today however that there was rising pressure from Scotland’s fisheries authority to tackle the juvenile cod issue and his impression of the attitude of government officials was that if the fishing industry did not get its own house in order, tough sanctions would follow.
“We have very low catches of cod landed in the prawn fishery but the perception appears to be that fishermen are catching and killing quite a lot of cod with prawn nets.
“Officials are trying to get fishermen to take for example a Swedish grid system to try to eradicate this problem in the cod recovery zone but there has been resistance to that among fishermen who say the grids would not only get rid of one species but most of the other whitefish species caught as by-catch as well.
“For example almost all the white fish sales at Fraserburgh are prawn by-catch so white fish are an important percentage of a prawn boat’s grossing.
“Basically, fishermen are being told to come up with more pro-active measures to try to reduce fish mortality. We are being told to come up with ideas but this issue is still very much under discussion although the pressure on us is increasing.”
Meanwhile white fish prices are remaining strong at Scottish markets.
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