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Austin Mitchell |
GRIMSBY fish market may have closed today for the festive break, but the feeling of gloom was somewhat thicker than the fog covering the town.
Jim Linstead, head of the Grimsby based East of England Producers Association, said in an interview that the deal did nothing at all for the local fishing industry.
"All the evidence is - even from some scientists - that cod stocks in North Sea are improving and there is no reason whatsoever for these latest cuts."
He believed that too many people were listening to the green view from environmentalists that all cod fishing should be banned and this was worrying.
Mr Linstead said the extra allowance on other species would not help the cod. "We shall be catching fish in our nets and then we shall be forced to throw back even more cod.
He added that the UK government track record at the talks had been poor in the past and, while he was not in Brussels this year, there has no evidence of any difference this time.
Doug Beverage, assistant secretary of the Grimsby based National Federation of Fishermen's Associations, said the deal would mean another year of "just scraping along the bottom" for the local fleet.
He added: "This is not very welcome - we have had four years of these cuts. Surely something more sophisticated could be done.
"They may have increased quotas for other species like haddock and prawns, but that is not much use to us if they are cutting the number of days we can spend at sea by between seven and ten per cent."
He said the Grimsby fleet had been reduced to a mere shadow of what it once was, and this deal, along with the effects of previous agreements, would not help those few boats that were still based in the port. Mr Beverage said the Brussels talks were always a bit of a pantomime at this time of year, start with proposals for a zero cod catch and then moving up. However, he conceded that the agreement was not quite as bad as was feared.
Grimsby MP Austin Mitchell had said any move to reduce catches of species other than cod - especially whiting - had to be firmly resisted. But there was every indication that cod was returning to the North Sea in large numbers. Austin said the North Sea stocks were totally different from those in the Irish Sea. He believes that the Grimsby fleet can start to rebuild once the new fish regeneration plan is completed, but he warned that EURO meddling could devastate what is left in the meantime.
Grimsby fish auctioneer Kurt Christiansen is likely to be relieved that the cuts were less than severe than first suggested because he had warned in an earlier interview a total cod ban would mean the end for what was left of the local North Sea fleet with the fishermen losing jobs and their families forced to seek benefits. His fear was that only countries like Iceland and Norway, with their large cod quotas, would benefit and prices were rise even higher.
But he stressed that Grimsby was a resilient port and despite all the problems was still the largest fish processing centre in Europe, employing thousands of people. It also had men and women skilled at sourcing fish on a world stage. "We want to the government to support our fishermen."
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Should fisheries be closed during breeding time to allow stocks to reach more sustainable levels?
