20 November 2012
There is something frequently missing in the media coverage of fishing’s environmental impact. The absence of an adequate balancing appreciation of fishing’s contribution to the nation’s food security is a glaring omission.
Sometimes it is necessary to state the obvious: Fishing produces fish. Fish feed people.
Since the Second World War, fishing in the UK has provided the basis for around 200 trillion meals. That is our back-of- an-envelope estimate.
Much of the current debate about fishing’s environmental impact takes place in a vacuum, with little or no reference to fishing’s central contribution to the nation’s food security. When assessing fishing’s environmental impact it is important that this reflection takes place within an appreciation of the value of high quality protein put on the table by the people who catch and land fish throughout the year, in sometimes difficult conditions.
The issue for discussion should not be whether fishing has an environmental impact but how can those impacts best be managed whilst we benefit from the food it provides. This is the missing component in the debate. In fact when compared to other different types of food production, fishing’s impacts are comparatively low.
There has been a notable lack of balance and sense of proportion in the public debate on fishing; and this has recently been stoked into a simple-minded media feeding frenzy, not least by the Sunday Times.
With a few honourable exceptions the mainstream media now deals exclusively in negative stereotypes. If there is a fish stock it’s collapsing; if there is a fishing vessel it is “hoovering”; if there is a net, it can hold several Boeing aircraft and if there is a trawler, it is an “industrial”(aka “bad”) trawler. Fishermen are portrayed as greedy, short-sighted rednecks, intent in destroying the marine environment.
Reality only rarely breaks through. And the whole debate seems disconnected from the food that is put on the table by fishermen in fishing vessels.
Stock Trends
After being fed so much apocalyptic doom by even the “serious” media outlets, the public is unlikely to believe a fishing organisation’s website about the direction in which our fish stocks are heading. The trends are there however, for those who wish to see, in the scientific advice and in the statements made by the European Commission. To be sure, some stocks are in more robust health than others; and only someone who had taken too many drugs could conclude that the Common Fisheries Policy has produced a first class system of resource management over the last 20 years. Nevertheless, it is perverse to suggest, against the clear impartial evidence from authoritative sources, that the stocks in our waters are in general decline. The opposite is true. As any primary school teacher could attest: “Could do better” is not the same as “getting worse”. And some stocks are doing exceptionally well.
Vessel Sizes: Industrial vs. Artisanal
Larger vessels come in for flack for no other reason than their size. But to catch a wide range of species under varying conditions and in locations as widely differing as West Greenland, the middle of the North Sea or in small inshore creeks, requires a diverse fleet of small, medium and big vessels. And that is what the UK has got. It is not sensible to equate “large” with “unsustainable” or “small” automatically with “sustainable”. It all depends what the vessels are doing, where and in what numbers.
Relying on picture postcard vessels to catch our fish as some suggest, would leave most of our quotas uncaught and a lot of people unfed. Equally, relying only on large vessels would leave much of our shellfish in the water and widespread unemployment in coastal towns and isolated communities and a hole in the supply of prime fish to the market. The safety of fishermen operating in widely differing conditions also demands different classes of vessel.
It is therefore fundamentally misconceived to create an artificial impression of David and Goliath sectors of the industry, or to suggest that one fleet sector’s gain can only be at another’s loss. In fact our fleets are to a high degree interdependent and reliant on each other to maintain port and marketing infrastructures.
Environmental Impact
In defending fishing against intemperate and ill-informed attacks, it is equally important not to swing the pendulum too far in the opposite direction and suggest that fishing has no environmental consequences. All food production, including fishing, has an environmental impact. The challenge is working out how to minimise those impacts whilst continuing to enjoy the benefits of sufficient high quality foodstuffs.
The much loved British landscape – all of it – even the wild highlands- has been shaped by human activity as people have striven to make a living, cutting down forests, ploughing fields, planting crops. But few suggest that we should return the countryside to primordial forests.
Different standards apparently apply when it comes to the sea.
MPAs
One way in which the impact of fishing can be limited is through marine protected areas. A network of marine protected areas, in which human activities, including fishing, are especially carefully managed, can be a sound approach to protecting vulnerable habitats and ecosystems, although their benefits have sometimes been exaggerated.
What is not sensible is to rush into designating marine protected areas in a fit of moral panic, with only half an idea about what it is you are trying to protect, inadequate evidence for designating areas, armed with the notion that good intentions are enough to bring about good results.
Steady progress
In fact steady progress has been made in reducing fishing’s impacts and will continue to be made. Finding intelligent ways of fishing that minimise discards and unwanted by-catch, reduce the impact of gear on seabed, and maintain balanced exploitation of target species, has advanced further in the last few years than the previous twenty.
Societal ideas about the conditions under which fish should be caught, landed and marketed are evolving and these provide challenges for the fishing industry. But contrary to the lazy media stereotypes, those challenges are being met.
Discards
The scale of discarding in the EU has, in large part, been an undesirable and widely publicised by-product of the way that our fisheries have been managed (or mismanaged). However, the impression given by the media, and certain celebrity chefs, that this is an issue that is not already being tackled is plain wrong. The English fleet has reduced the absolute amount of discards by its vessels by 50% over the last decade.
As there are different drivers for discards in different fisheries, so solutions vary fishery by fishery. A “ban on discards” will almost certainly be a central element in the CFP reform package currently under discussion in the European Parliament but real progress in minimising the amount of discards still further will be dependent on workable, practical solutions in each fishery. In this sense, the “ban” will just be an extension of the progress that has already been made through initiatives such as catch quota trials, the 50% Project, various kinds of fully documented fisheries, more selective gear, real time closures, cod avoidance etc. What could dramatically reduce discards further would be changes to the fisheries management rules which generate discards: quotas set in mixed fisheries without regard to the discards that will result and the catch composition rules that assume that fish swim in fixed percentages are two of the worst culprits.
Back toFood Security
With current projections for population growth, not to mention rising societal expectations, food security is one of the major issues facing the planet. Despite the growth of aquaculture, wild caught fish will remain a major plank in meeting the increased demand associated with that population growth.
Fishing recognises along with all other forms of food production that it will have to raise its game and address its faults. If this short article does anything, it should have made clear that the issues are understood by the fishing industry and fisheries managers; and that the industry and managers are already addressing those issues by fishing more intelligently. The reform of the Common Fisheries Policy, if it is handled well, should provide the basis for continued progress.