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Eighteen Newlyn beam-trawlers owned by W Stevenson and Sons are all having
to dump one and a half metric tonnes of whole monkfish per trip because
of "quota madness".
French fishermen operating in lucrative Cornish waters have over nine
times more monkfish quota than the Cornish boats, whose skippers and crew
are having to throw back dead monkfish on a daily basis.
Chairman-elected of the National Federation of Fishermen's Organisation
Elizabeth Stephenson, of the UK largest family-owned fishing firm, says
this adds up to a loss of £4,000 every seven days for each boat.
A 30 per cent increase in monkfish quota achieved by Fisheries Minister
Ben Bradshaw at last December's fish quota talks is not enough, she says.
Elizabeth is confident "that in the end the scientists must change
their mind because we are telling the truth. There's more monkfish out
there than they believe. I think scientists know that there's more monkfish
out there than their data says. I'm not saying that their figures are
wrong, but those figures are insufficient and we are pushing to help by
having more scientists abroad or boats looking directly at the monkfish
issue.
"Fishermen's leaders have been confrontational for many years, and
last year we at Newlyn changed our tactics and were co-operative.
"We welcomed scientists abroad our boats. Hopefully that helped
towards the 30 per cent increase in monkfish quota. But we have to go
further, much further, and convince both scientists and the EU Commission
that the Monkfish stock is far greater in size than they believe it is.
"We have already had positive discussions with new leaders of the
Department of the Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), and I am
hoping that we will see a result. Let's just stick to the facts. We need
scientists abroad our boats and will keep them pushing until we have them
at sea, seeing for themselves that the monkfish stick is very healthy.
article copyright © THE CORNISHMAN
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