A NEWLYN fisherman has become so dispirited dumping
his over-quota fish overboard that he is flouting the law by landing it
for friends and the elderly instead.
Mick Mahon, a fisherman for 43 years who owns the 29 foot J-Anne trawler, said after 20 years of dumping fish the time has come for a moral stand.
"In
his speech the EU Fisheries Minister said it was immoral to throw away
fish. Well I'm a moral person and I'm not dumping fish any more," he
said.
The
Marine Fisheries Agency (MFA) whicwh enforces quota regulations by
imposing fines on fishermen who break the rules, said it was against
the law to land fish without quota, "regardless of what the fisherman
then does with it – sell it, or give it away".
But
the well known campaigner, who has given away "several tons of fish"
since the start of the year, said he is well aware of the penalties.
"I'm deliberately not making a single
penny out of it; all I ask is they put a few pennies in the RNLI and
mission collection boxes when they pass by.
"We've
all got TVs on our boats; you dump a couple of tons of fish and then
turn on to see people starving in Africa. It's a sick world that makes
fishermen throw away fish."
Fish
quotas are set by the EU based on scientific advice from the CEFAS (The
Centre for Environment, Fisheries & Aquaculture Science).
However, 'by catch' – untargetted fish caught in nets – is an ongoing problem. Mr Mahon said his biggest 'by catch' was haddock.
"I
have a quota for 500 tons a month and I can catch that in one tow," he
said. "In all my years as a fishermen I have never seen so much
haddock, I can't get away from it."
Paul
Trebilcock, fisherman's representative of the Cornish Fish Producers
Organisation, said he could not argue with Mr Mahon's moral stance.
"There
is definitely more haddock out there than there has been for years.
It's one of those quotas which is out of line with its assessments," he
said.
Mr Trebilcock said he was trying to persuade the MFA to take another look at the stock and reconsider the quota.
A
spokesperson for the MFA said it recognised there was unhappiness at
the size of quotas for the under-10 metre fleet. "We are taking various
measures to try and improve the situation, but that situation will not
be helped by individuals breaking the law and the MFA will take the
appropriate action if the law is broken," he said.
● Some fishermen have found other ways of fishing which removes the discard problem.
A
bass tagging scheme devised by Newlyn skipper Andrew Pascoe and Nathan
de Rozarieux, project director of Seafood Cornwall, has created a
sustainable inshore bass fishery by returning to the oldest and most
sustainable ways of fishing. Different types of line and hooks are
used, according to the species. There is no 'by catch' and because the
fish are caught live, any undersized ones are immediately put back in
the water. The Cornish fishing fleet is made up mainly of small
vessels, less than 10 metres long. Less than a third of the fleet
consists of netters and bigger trawlers. Yet only around 10% of the
fishing quota for species caught in the waters around Cornwall (cod,
sole, Dover sole, monkfish, hake, plaice, megrim sole, pollack,
haddock, ling, coley and langoustine) is allocated to Cornish boats.
The remaining quota goes to boats from France, Spain, Ireland, Belgium
and the Netherlands – the result of Edward Heath giving away these
rights to British fisheries when Britain joined the EU in 1973.
