A newlyn fisherman has set off on a three-week voyage to London to help save British fish.
Mick
Mahon, a well-known local campaigner for the industry, is currently aboard
his 29-ft trawler J-Anne to tell the British public that the only way
to save British fish is for the UK to leave Europe. Once in London Mick,
who left his home port at the weekend, plans a protest at Traitor's Gate.
During his 23-day trip, Mick will be meeting the public at 17 ports he will visit along the south and south-east coast.
He said: "As a fisherman I have watched the UK fishing industry be selectively destroyed, year after year ever since we joined Europe.
"I began fishing from my home port of Grimsby in the early 1960s, working off Iceland, Greenland and in the White Sea when the UK cod fleet was being kicked out of north Atlantic waters. Now I'm being economically kicked out of my own waters.
"I will forever fight for my interests under the Fishermen's Association Ltd which says that the only way ahead is for the UK to be out of the CFP and I personally, as a director of the Fishermen's Association Ltd, say that the only way to achieve that is for Britain to leave Europe."
Mick added: "The UK must look towards the Faeroes who now sit upon a valuable fishing industry, one quickly gained after it kicked out all European ideas of quota management. Faeroes' fishermen now take a major part in Faeroes' fisheries management. Our management by Defra (under the CFP) is a continual disaster; dumping fish at sea does nothing for conservation and means boats stay out longer and fish harder to make up the economic losses of dumped fish.
"Politicians know that and try to ignore it, using words like 'discards' wishing that one day their ideas will work. Those ideas will never work. We, the British people are sitting upon very valuable fish stocks, ones that Europe badly wants and ones that it will eventually get if we remain within Europe."
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