Europe fisheries policy protest

The EU last month announced its allowable quotas for various species within its waters for this coming year that fishermen will be able to land and sell. The aim behind the quotas is to limit fishing in an effort to preserve stocks at sustainable levels, but the policy is being shown increasingly to be damaging many stocks, caught by fishermen pursuing one species but catching others, which often must be thrown back dead into the sea. EU fishermen in the North Sea and northeast Atlantic are now reckoned to be throwing away up to half of all the fish they catch every year in what a new campaign says is a chronic waste of food and is damaging potential recovery in some fish stocks. Almost one million dead and dying fish are discarded at sea each year, according to a campaign calling for Europe’s Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) to be comprehensively reformed. Most are thrown overboard because they are too small, are of the wrong species or would take fishing boats over their quotas, making it illegal to land them. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, the British food campaigner and celebrity chef, has been spurred to set up the campaign after learning of the extent of discarded fish. Within two days of launch, more than 24,000 people had signed up to the FishFight campaign and their names will be added to a letter to EU fisheries commissioner, Maria Damanaki, demanding the end of discards. The campaign was launched to put pressure on the EU to make the elimination of discards a ‘primary objective’ of reform of the CFP. Fearnley-Whittingstall said the discards at present are “an unavoidable consequence of the CFP and the quota system”, adding: “The fish are being thrown away because to land them would be illegal.” The scale of discards is highlighted in a new television series to be broadcast soon in the UK. There are no precise figures on the levels of discards because they A new campaign aims to reduce waste from ‘bycatch’ discards. Nigel Williams reports. Europe fisheries policy protest