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THE National Federation of Fishermen's Organisation has just completed a constructive meeting with the Marine Management Organisation, raising a number of concerns affecting its members.
They included electronic logbooks, the performance of the European Fisheries Fund English programme, progress in implementing new EU controls and issues arising from enforcement measures in the new marine conservation zones.
A wide range of issues were covered at a recent meeting between the NFFO and the Marine Management Organisation, held recently in the MMO’s headquarters in Newcastle. Amongst the issues discussed were:
But it was the growing number of potential pitfalls facing fishermen today which can easily bring them into conflict with the law which took up much of the discussion.
The NFFO said: "The MMO and NFFO are both agreed that the complexity of the Common Fisheries Policy has led to an “absolute minefield” of potential offences for fishing vessels.
"There is therefore a need for pragmatic and proportionate enforcement that, so far as possible, separates minor infringements from determined and recurrent rule-breaking. Fisheries administrative penalties have helped to streamline the process and a new system of monthly reviews of all fisheries offences is being implemented to bring consistency and to ensure that prosecutions if they are to happen are brought forward in a timely fashion.
"We raised a number of incidents in which boardings at sea had been handled clumsily with apparent disregard for fishing operations and our concerns would be passed on to the Royal Navy. It was agreed to reinstate liaison days with the Fisheries Protection Squadron, with port visits by fisheries protection vessels in the Irish Sea, Shoreham and Hartlepool on dates in the near future.
"The potential for repeated prosecutions for infringement of the 10 per cent margin of tolerance -particularly for small quantities - was raised and the need for a reasonable, pragmatic and risk based approach was underlined.
It was agreed to discuss further the details of a voluntary net tagging scheme which potentially could reduce the time and anxiety of net measurements at sea.
The NFFO statement added: "This was a constructive meeting which aimed to make the best out of a management system that is over-complex, in places fundamentally irrational, and certainly far removed from the practicalities of fishing; but is the law - until that law can be changed. The MMO has faced a difficult baptism of fire but the meeting showed that there is at least a strong will to temper the rough edges of the CFP without abandoning the core purpose of enforcing fisheries regulations."
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