Several worst-case scenarios have been avoided, but the unexpected inclusion of technical measures brings with it much uncertainty.
The end of year TAC negotiations are always a tense time, but 2025 was more pressured than most, with the North Sea fleet staring down the barrel of an unhelpful and confused ICES headline scenario that would have been unsurvivable for many businesses. In the end, we have a 44% cut in the Northern Shelf cod TAC that will be extremely painful for many, but not ruinous. We can only hope that the promised improvements in the scientific basis of next year’s advice will not bring us back to that worrying place in 2026.
Further south, we can be pleased to see pollack returning to a targeted fishery, after 2 years of zero TAC that many felt was not warranted. The bag limit for recreational anglers – long acknowledged to be a significant contributor to pollack mortality – is also welcome. The outcome for spurdog was also positive, with a reduction in the TAC to protect the stock coupled with a removal of the maximum landing size, to increase the fishery’s commercial viability. This is just what the industry has been recommending for some time and should be considered a victory for collaborative management between fishermen, scientists and officials. Bycatch only allowances for cod and haddock are more difficult, however, and so fishermen working the Irish Sea, Celtic Sea and Channel waters will have another challenging year ahead.
The most concerning aspect of the annual negotiation outcomes does not concern TACs, however: it is the inclusion for the first time of technical management measures in the written record. To the surprise of seemingly everyone, the EU requested that technical measures relating to trawl mesh sizes be introduced in the Channel, Irish Sea and Celtic Sea fisheries, ostensibly for ‘conservation’ reasons, as part of the regular quota discussions.
When the UK left the EU, our departure from the much-maligned, deeply politicised and plainly failing Common Fisheries Policy, and the assumption of regulatory autonomy in fisheries management matters was perhaps the only benefit that our fishing industry saw. We understood that we would have the freedom to make our own rules to govern fish resources in our own waters, as an independent coastal state should. The mechanism for this was to be the ‘Fisheries Management Plan’ programme. Begun under the last Conservative government and adopted by Labour, this has been a genuinely ambitious and widely popular effort to bring together scientists, fishermen, fisheries managers and civil society, to manage a national resource for long-term collective benefit, on the basis of solid scientific evidence ahead of all other considerations. It may have been somewhat slow to get started, but it has also been genuinely well-intentioned, inclusive of all views, and pragmatically decisive when it has needed to be. It is not a perfect system, but it is better than anything else that has yet been tried.
New mesh size regulations are exactly the sort of management measure that we would expect to be consulted on under the FMP system. They have significant financial and opportunity cost implications for fishermen and bear scientific and economic scrutiny. It was startling to learn, therefore, that the collaborative process that we all thought we were working within had been set aside in favour of a bargain struck between civil servants over a few days in London and Brussels.
More troubling still, it seems that the rules will be more lenient in EU waters than in UK waters. The key line in the Written Record is that larger mesh sizes must be used “in accordance with each Party’s catch composition rules”. Since the UK does not apply such rules, British fishermen will have the huge expense of buying new nets that are designed to ensure that they catch fewer fish. Meanwhile, their direct competitors in the EU will enjoy a far more lenient regime that allows them continue to use smaller mesh sizes, as long as their catches do not contain more than a particular percentage of certain fish species. If the UK was blindsided by the EU’s push for management measures to be incorporated into the TAC talks then – by not only acceding to their demands but agreeing on harsher rules for ourselves alone – we seem to have poked ourselves in the other eye to finish the job.
If the UK’s domestic fisheries management rules are going to be decided in the annual negotiations with the EU, our understanding of the entire FMP process is undermined. The European Commission could replace British fishermen and scientists in fisheries management matters. Their months of consultation, research and debate could be discarded in favour of trade-offs and brinkmanship. Evidence-based management and collaboration might be out and the political deal-making back in, with Europe very obviously dominant.
It is not hard to see the dangerous route that this could lead us down. Less than a week after the EU-UK negotiations were concluded, the EU’s North Western Waters Advisory Council published an open letter in which: “The NWWAC recommends that the Advisory Councils must always be involved in developing technical and remedial measures, even when their preparation does not follow the regionalisation process, and are, for instance, decided in the TACs and quotas negotiations including in the EU-UK consultations.” If this EU ‘stakeholder’ body, which includes European fishing industry associations, environmental NGOs, and European civil society groups in its membership, is going to take on an enhanced role in deciding the UK’s domestic fisheries management then we are very far from being an independent coastal state. It would be premature to say that we are crawling back into the CFP via the back door, but such a possibility looks a lot less improbable than it did a few weeks ago.
We must not jump the gun, though. One bad outcome doesn’t set a precedent. It would be disingenuous to claim that the fishing industry is about to be abandoned and ignored as it has been in the past. There has been regular and meaningful dialogue with government, officials and scientists throughout the last year. The new Fisheries and Coastal Growth Fund, and the clear intention of those responsible to develop and deploy it in a strategic manner for long-term benefit, are genuine and substantial positives. The crucial thing will be to avoid snatching defeat from the jaws of victory by weakening our regulatory autonomy at this crucial juncture.
What happens next? It seems clear that, over the next year, the workings of the EU-UK Specialised Committee on Fisheries are going to assume much greater importance. How robustly our officials and our government defend the UK’s right to self-determination in domestic fisheries management matters in that forum and in the 2026 negotiations will be watched very closely.
Following a ballot carried out earlier in the week, the new team at the helm was introduced: President Paul Gilson, Chairman Chris Ranford and Vice Chair Phil Haslam, pictured here with NFFO CEO Mike Cohen.
The meeting was opened by President Paul Gilson, who welcomed everyone aboard the beautiful setting of the historic warship. After a roundup of the Federation’ year from CEO Mike Cohen, NFFO Chairman Chris Ranford gave his annual speech:
“Representing you as your Chairman this past year, well, I’ve certainly seen my surfing career fade away, but I’m on first name terms with the sleeper train staff from Penzance to London, and I might have made more money from train delay repay claims than the salary, but every part of it has been worth it. To stand beside the NFFO team and represent the industry far behind the scenes with the various government agencies and people in the room, it’s awesome to be a part of and ensure the fishing voice is heard loud and clear.
That aside, I am glad I personally live and work in a fishing community, so I can remind myself every day what is really happening, and how wild the world outside, looking in at fishing, can be at times. If you only followed the headlines in 2025, who knows what you might end up believing. I like the fact I can walk up to the coast path and watch the boats in Mounts bay, working all hours to hunt food. I like the fact I can wander down the quay in the early hours, and see what is being landed. And around lunch time I can walk past pubs, cafes, restaurants and check out the menus and see a range of seafood being proudly advertised: caught by our members, and consumed with smiles on faces. It is essential, in order to paint the picture of this to whoever we are engaging with, and to share stories and real life experiences with whoever we meet: be it the Secretary of State, Minister, celebrity chef, ENGO, school teacher, student or a parent.
It’s an endless job to educate and re-educate, but one I enjoy and can draw from so much experience we have in the NFFO. I thank you all: our members, our president, our vice chairman, our Exec, the core team: bravo for standing strong in a tough year, keeping your cool, and working with facts, using common sense and as much calm as possible. A small team we might be, but I often find the NFFO voice is the clearest in the room, the most forward thinking, the most articulate, the most honest. We don’t come with problems, we bring solutions. Surely this approach pays off in the end.
Looking forward, I do hope that 2026 is a little more simple…
Fishing needs space, not just at sea to do the job, but space to think, space to deliver our own solutions. It is not easy to simplify, it’s actually much easier to add another layer of complexity and assume we are doing the right thing. So I find myself looking for simplicity when wearing the chairman’s hat and presenting the fishing industry in a complex world. I was recently shown Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. A simple model that shows how people progress from the most basic requirements for survival to the highest levels of fulfilment and contribution. And when you look at the fishing industry through that lens, you see very clearly that fishing supports every level of human need. The case for our industry becomes undeniable. Fishing is not an extra part. Fishing is a foundation.
The foundation for humans is for physiological needs to be met
At the base of the hierarchy is the need for food. Real food. Seafood remains one of the most positively potent sources of physical and mental nourishment. 2 portions a week according to the NHS. It’s in the national food strategy, finally: fish is part of the good food cycle and getting people off the junk food cycle. Upwards of 50 different species are landed on our quaysides, beaches, coves. Densely packed nutrients, omega 3’s, wild unprocessed protein: it’s not just food security, fish is a super food. Don’t forget that.
Safety and security needs
Next up the pyramid comes safety, stability and resilience.
And in a world full of geopolitical risks, seemingly escalating each week, this foundation matters more than ever. When I see a boat steaming in or out to sea, or I walk down any quayside, I feel a sense of safety. I know that people are out there harvesting and preparing food. I see the supply chain in action and know these people have jobs, income, worth. I see lights on in dark winter nights, I hear forklifts buzzing all hours, keeping me awake, but knowing this isn’t a seasonal part time employer. Fishing is real life.
Belonging and community
The next level is belonging. Community. Connection.
Earlier this year, as part of the regional committees tour in East Anglia, I found myself sitting in a shed – a proper shed, wood burner on – with Mike Roach, our President, and Charles Blythe, sheltering from a brutally cold north wind. We were meeting with local fishermen and taking the work of the NFFO into those quieter corners, ensuring they know who is representing fishermen, and ensuring our ear is tuned in to their local needs. I listened to fishermen share their challenges honestly, but also their hope and ambitions. They spoke openly about how the NFFO could support them. They spoke about learning from the past and moving forward. That was community in action.
Esteem
Next comes esteem. Pride. Respect. Recognition.
I feel that the industry led movement to unite itself as a whole seafood sector is stronger than ever. Last week in Newlyn we hosted the Minister, where we met people from every step of the supply chain, not staged, just real life. All within a few early hours of the day, witnessing each piece of the puzzle mingle and work together and respect one another. Every one of them spoke with passion, belief, eager to share their knowledge, their solutions, their future. Standing in that space, surrounded by the buzz you can only find in a fishing community, you cannot help but feel the pride.
Self actualisation
Finally we reach the top of the pyramid. Self actualisation. The space where people and industries fulfil their potential, innovate and shape the future. This is where our industry stands some of the time, but it is where we need to stay more often. It is also where government needs to meet us and spend time working with us. Look at what we achieve when we operate in this space. Fisheries science partnerships, fishing gear innovation and technology advancements – certainly better than ban this or ban that – vast improvements in safer working conditions and safety equipment, mentorships and training schemes, young fishermen networks, women in fishing networks, raising prices of under loved species, engaging with competing sectors in a healthy environment, sharing data and evidence, moving us into a safer future and not standing on each other’s toes.
So, Let’s spend more time here in 2026. Let’s find some space, so fishing can move forward.”
Listening to this was the Food Security Minister, Dame Angela Eagle DBE MP, along with members of the Defra fisheries team. The Minister’s speech acknowledged the importance of sustaining coastal communities and struck a positive note with her remarks about listening to and working with all parts of the fishing industry in the year ahead and using the forthcoming Fisheries and Coastal Growth Fund to leverage lasting positive change. Shadow Food Security Minister, Neil Hudson MP, joined the meeting next and the final guest was Alistair Carmichael MP: the chair of the EFRA Select Committee, co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Fisheries and long-standing friend of the fishing industry.
Each of the three speakers’ contributions was followed by a lively Q&A session which demonstrated how willing our elected representatives, of all political parties, have been to engage seriously and knowledgeably with the fishing industry’s concerns over the past year.
The next 12 months will doubtless be challenging – once again – but it is clear that the NFFO remains well positioned to meet those challenges, with a strong leadership team in the Executive Committee and its new officers.
Held just days before the 2026 end of year fisheries negotiations, the meeting set the tone for the months ahead and underlined the need for a pragmatic, evidence based approach to management and policy.
Representatives from across the NFFO membership, covering both inshore and offshore fleets around the entire English coast, presented the breadth of industry priorities and perspectives. NFFO CEO Mike Cohen opened by emphasising that this is a defining period for decisions on fishing opportunities, sustainable management and ensuring there are growth opportunities and a focus on national food security. Decisions made in this year’s annual negotiations will shape how the sector and government work together in the years ahead.
Balancing Science, Economics and Communities for 2026 fishing opportunities
Regarding the North Sea, both cod and mackerel were priority talking points and members warned that increasingly rigid ICES modelling leaves little room for practical judgement and management options, creating year to year volatility that undermines business confidence, investment and long-term food security. The NFFO called for a management approach that uses science wisely but not blindly. While the North Sea faces volatility in some key stocks, the South West is showing encouraging and ongoing recovery for pollack, spurdog and bass. Members called for alignment of pollack management with French recreational rules given the new ICES advice now incorporating recreational catches, which will speed up recovery for an important fishery, and more pragmatic bass measures to match the improving scientific outlook.
Working with eNGOs: Finding Solutions, Not Fighting Battles
The NFFO membership highlighted its growing record of constructive collaboration with eNGOs, in contrast to the noise of anti-fishing campaigns from the extreme end of the spectrum. Examples shared with the Minister included Clean Catch, which brings together science, industry and NGOs to develop practical bycatch solutions, and the Spurdog recovery, where partnership work successfully rebuilt a stock once under severe pressure. That same collaboration is now turning to new management scenarios in response to a growing population. These examples show that progress comes through partnership and pragmatism, not polarisation. Further thoughts were shared on how this should be applied to future management of marine protected areas and fisheries management plans.
Inshore Pressures and the Need for Joined Up Management
Inshore representatives set out the urgent need for better alignment between IFCA and MMO around parts of the coast, calling for a shared culture of consistency, transparency and practicality in management decisions. The message was clear: new fishing opportunities must be created and shared fairly to maximise benefits for coastal communities.
Inshore and non-sector reps also highlighted the intensifying spatial squeeze, as renewable energy development, MPAs and continued EU fleet access to 2038 leave limited space for domestic vessels to operate.
New Funding for fishermen
Looking ahead, the NFFO urged that the Fisheries and Coastal Growth Fund deliver tangible benefits at the quayside, supporting:
- Training and skills development
- Science partnerships
- Technological innovation
- Sector growth and resilience
A Constructive Start
The meeting set a positive and open tone between the NFFO and the new Minister. The Federation will continue to work closely with government as negotiations and domestic policy evolve, ensuring the voice of the fishing industry is heard clearly and constructively at every level.
Chris Ranford
NFFO Chair
Defra has just finished consulting the public about proposals to ban various types of fishing in 42 Marine Protected Areas. This consultation was launched to coincide with the UN Ocean summit and the release of Oceans, an astonishingly successful and deeply unbalanced piece of influence film making, largely paid for by an Australian mining and cattle ranching billionaire who is now investing heavily in offshore construction projects. The intemperate language of some politicians and NGOs, seemingly determined to capitalise on the moment for their own ends, has led to fishermen being abused in public and a marked increase in the volume of hate mail that we at the NFFO regularly receive from environmentalists. This is far from the collaborative working for more sustainable resource management that we all used to aspire to.
The NFFO has no objection to management measures that restrict fishing in order to protect fragile features in MPAs. Where there is compelling empirical evidence that particular activity is causing quantifiable harm to identified features, it is only reasonable to consider proportionate restrictions on that activity.
That, however, is not what this proposal represents. Indeed, it doesn’t really seem to be about MPA management at all.
Across the 30,000km2 of seabed that the proposals relate to – that’s an area half as large again as Wales – there are many different types of features, in different conditions, sensitive to different types of disturbance, with many different types and levels of human activity nearby. Only one management measure is proposed for them all, though: ban fishing.
Some sites are recorded as being in favourable condition with current fishing activity, so why is a fishing ban needed? Some types of bottom contacting gear are reported as having low impact on the environment, so why ban them in particular? In some of the sites there is no bottom trawling activity at all, so why pretend that their current condition has anything to do with fishing, or that declaring such sites to be off limits to trawlers will improve them?
If the aim of this proposal was really to improve the condition of these sites, these things should be obviously irrelevant. That isn’t the real aim, though: the true objective appears to be simply to ban various kinds of fishing, as an end in itself.
This is no conspiracy theory: it’s just taking the promoters of the move at their word.
When he was Secretary of state for the Environment, Steve Reed MP said: “Tomorrow at the UN Ocean Conference in France, I’ll announce the government’s plans to ban bottom trawling across 41 protected areas of English seas spanning 30,000 square kilometres” He seems to have the number of sites wrong and he neglected to mention the other types of fishing that they are looking to ban at the same time, but his message is still clear.
When she was Leader of the House of Commons, Lucy Powell MP said: “We were all shocked by Sir David Attenborough’s film about the destruction caused by bottom trawling, which this Government will ban in protected British waters”. Announcing the outcome of a consultation 10 weeks before it has finished, on the strength of messaging that a celebrity was paid to read out, is not how fisheries management used to be done.
These senior spokespeople made it plain that banning fishing was their primary objective. Trying to use measures for the management of the MPA network to achieve this, rather than stating it openly as a policy that could be subjected to open and honest debate, has led to disproportionate and unreasonable outcomes and has required excessive reliance on precautionary principle to justify it, while neglecting other key objectives in the Fisheries Act, such as the scientific evidence and community benefit objectives.
This over-simplistic, binary choice – a total ban or doing nothing – and the way in which various individuals in and outside of government have leapt on it to create social division for their own ends, have been deeply disappointing. Rather than gathering evidence and working with fishermen to devise management options to balance social, economic, environmental and food production priorities, we have an all-or-nothing proposal with only a single option, justified by precaution in the absence of any proper effort to gather sufficient data. This is contrary to processes previously employed in managing MPAs and also that of devolved nations undertaking the same exercise.
Despite mixed messaging from politicians and officials about whether this is intended to be a ‘whole site’ or ‘features based’ approach to MPA management, in practice the definition of ‘features’ so as to encompass entire sites makes this a distinction without a difference in almost all cases.
The proposed bans will cause significant economic harm to many fishermen; to businesses up and down the UK and European seafood supply chains; and to coastal communities. The consultation failed to correctly characterise the economic and social impact of the proposals to such an extent that it presents a misleading impression of huge environmental gain in the long term, for minimal cost. Analysis conducted on behalf of the NFFO, using detailed financial and fishing activity records, suggests that a sample of just 55 vessels stand to lose fishing activity worth an estimated £15m per year, which equates to a lost gross profit of £2.3m. This is more than 400% higher than the MMO’s estimate of the total impact on the entire affected UK fleet (1,300 boats, in their estimation). Supply chain losses may be as much as 7 times greater than those in the fishing fleet alone and very significant numbers of jobs can be expected to be lost, at sea and on land.
The NFFO has done its best to make the case for more nuanced and effective management of our seas, based on evidence rather than celebrity endorsement. Many others, including some of the nation’s most eminent fisheries scientists have done the same. The reality, though, is that all the scientific facts and all the evidence about the enormous harm the proposals will do to fishing businesses and coastal communities will count for nothing if the political will to help us is not there.
Everything now comes down to the decision that our new Environment Secretary will take. Will she support our industry, or hammer another nail into its coffin? The choice she makes will define this government’s relationship with our industry for a long time to come.
New advice from ICES for a zero TAC in the iconic North Sea cod fishery is bound to capture headlines, but behind the numbers lies a far more complicated reality, in which a contested computer model and warming seas have led to a nonsensical proposal to stop fishing a population that contains millions of fish and is actually growing.
Dale Rodmell, of the Eastern England FPO, explains in this new article: https://eefpo.org.uk/northern-cod-zero-catch-advice-whats-really-going-on/
According to the MMO’s Stage 3 De Minimis Assessment (June 2025) approximately 1,303 UK fishing vessels are expected to be directly impacted by these gear restrictions. The eight ports facing the highest estimated revenue losses are spread across different counties, with around 50% of the total losses concentrated in the South West of England.
The National Federation of Fishermen’s Organisations (NFFO), representing England’s fishing industry, is preparing a formal response to the UK Government’s consultation on new fishing restrictions proposed for 42 MPAs in English waters.
Key to this is determining what is caught within the affected MPAs, where these catches go post-landing, and how vessel owners and fishermen perceive the proposed changes and their expected effects. This input is essential for establishing the “true impact” of the policy changes on fishing communities, seafood markets, and related livelihoods.
The NFFO is requesting affected vessel owners to complete a questionnaire based on fishing activity in MPAs between July 2023 and June 2025. The form should not take more than 20 minutes if you fish in one MPA, be completed as accurately and thoroughly as possible, including details such as species, catch weight, and fishing gear used.
The quality and volume of responses will strengthen the NFFO’s evidence-based case to government. Individual responses will remain confidential within the NFFO’s consultancy team, with only anonymous, aggregated data published.
This is your chance to have your say! If you are impacted by this policy proposal then please fill in a questionnaire and share with others who may also be affected.
There is an option to fill the form in digitally, please follow the links below. If you wish for a hard copy of the survey please contact the NFFO.
Your help information will help us put together the strongest argument, backed by evidence to the Government as to the true impact of the proposals.
Western Channel and South West https://forms.gle/SDRbmdT1bh4PbNXb7
Eastern Channel https://forms.gle/rmo3hmzvoZpCfJTt8
North Sea https://forms.gle/SFNYDvRdgHeLyi1s5
Irish Sea https://forms.gle/1wrzupUK4PR5ZXDX8
Across Europe, fisheries are integral to our coastal identity, food security, cultural heritage, and economy. Generations of fishers have passed down their knowledge of the sea, building a resilient sector rooted in experience, responsibility, and deep connection to the marine environment. Today, our fishers continue this tradition not in defiance of sustainability, but in active pursuit of it. Maintaining a healthy environment and productive fish stocks ensures fishers can keep fishing, and that the next generation can do so too.
Wild caught fish is a healthy and vital source of protein with a lower carbon footprint than most animal products. Yet, the very people who ensure this sustainable supply are being sidelined. Instead of reinforcing our local, high-standard production system, these policies risk dismantling it – only to replace it with seafood imports from countries where environmental protection, labour rights, and traceability are far less stringent. This not only exports our environmental footprint, but also erodes control over sustainability and transparency.
That is why we raise our collective voice against the approach proposed under Stage 3 of the Marine Protected Areas (MPAs). These measures, presented without due consideration for socio-economic realities, threaten not only the viability of our fishing communities, but also European food security. Given the critical issues that are at stake for our sector, we must highlight the extremely short consultation period, particularly in light of the number of proposed measures and the amount of relevant documentation. As a minimum, we request a deadline extension until the 1st of November.
Fishers are not the problem, they are part of the solution. Our sector has undertaken enormous efforts to reduce environmental impact: through gear innovations, real-time closures, effort reductions, spatial planning, and diversified practices. These initiatives are often sector-led, driven by a shared understanding that the health of our ocean is non-negotiable. All of this has been done within an increasingly complex regulatory framework and under intensifying geopolitical pressures. And yet, our fishers continue to deliver fresh, local, healthy seafood to our plates.
Now, these efforts are being punished. The management measures proposed for Stage 3 MPAs ignore ecological nuance, local fishing practices, and existing sustainability gains. The logic behind them is flawed: rather than aligning with clear conservation objectives, the proposals apply a one-size-fits-all approach with little regard for actual impact. In habitat types with high resilience (e.g., coarse sediments subject to a high tidal range), measures that completely ban towed gear confuse “pressure” and “impact”. The social and economic harm that will result from broad-scale and indiscriminate trawling bans are completely disproportionate to the minimal environmental benefit that may be realised in some sites.
It is often claimed that passive fishing methods are the ecological alternative, used to justify the exclusion of active fishing from MPAs. Yet, in certain areas, even these are now being banned. The logic behind such blanket exclusions is inconsistent, even contradictory. The fact that passive gears are also banned in certain zones undermines the entire premise. A selective narrative is being applied to justify sweeping restrictions without fully assessing actual ecological impact, compatibility with conservation goals, or the socio-economic consequences for our fishing communities.
The current proposals go beyond merely assessing direct economic impact, they present an unbalanced and assumption-driven approach. While the de minimis assessment appears focused on minimising direct impacts on fishing businesses, it simultaneously adopts an overly broad interpretation of the indirect benefits of a ban. This selective framing skews the analysis and fails to capture the real-world consequences. We urge the MMO to conduct a comprehensive and evidence-based evaluation that includes the broader effects of displaced fishing effort, the cumulative impact of growing spatial restrictions, and the socio-economic repercussions. This must also include an assessment of how displacement will affect the ecological integrity of other European stocks and habitats that will experience increased pressure. We also expect the MMO to consider maritime security issues, and to propose concrete and realistic scenarios for cohabitation between uses with the fishing restrictions they envisage. We also note that, there is insufficient evidence that alternative, less harmful approaches were seriously considered in the design of these measures. This highlights the lack of transparent, science-based evaluation at the heart of this process and the lack of proportionality in the measures that are proposed.
This sectoral alliance calls for a fundamental shift: from sweeping, symbolic gestures to tailored, science-based management plans for each MPA, through a case-by-case approach. These must be developed in partnership with fishers, using site-specific ecological knowledge to determine which fishing methods can be compatible with conservation. Real protection does not come from declarations crafted for headlines or social media, but from the hard, collaborative work of reconciling nature and livelihoods.
Although climate change presents long-term challenges, the biggest risk to the survival of European fisheries comes from policy decisions made without their involvement. Despite their capacity to adapt and innovate, fishers are increasingly constrained by measures developed in isolation and applied across the sector without regard for nuance or local realities. This has led to a situation where the fishing sector is held to increasingly strict environmental standards, while other maritime industries, such as offshore wind development and coastal infrastructure, continue to expand, often with far less scrutiny. Their impact on fishing grounds and marine ecosystems is rarely addressed in a comprehensive way. Cumulative impact assessments, if conducted at all, often fail to capture the full picture of spatial competition and ecological stress. Policies are developed in silos, with fisheries expected to adapt endlessly — to shift, to move, to “just fish somewhere else.” Space at sea is not infinite, however, for many coastal communities, neither is time. If fishers continue to be treated as
an afterthought in marine spatial planning, we jeopardise not only their future, but the resilience of our coastal food systems and maritime cultures.
Area closures must be carefully considered to avoid exacerbating environmental, economic and social issues through their complex unintended consequences. Where effort is displaced; for example, vessels are pushed out of productive areas and forced to concentrate their effort in nearby zones that are often less suitable – increasing pressure on fish stocks and intensifying fishing efforts at the fleet level. This ripple effect can undermine the ecological balance across broader regions and further erode the viability of responsible fisheries. Let us not pretend there are quick fixes. Marine protection must be meaningful, proportionate, and rooted in reality. If we fail to involve those who know the sea best, like our fishers, then we risk losing not only a sector, but a centuries-old relationship with the ocean that we all rely on.
Quotes
“We are not against protection, we are against pretending that protection means exclusion. A healthy ocean needs sustainable fisheries, and sustainable fisheries need space to operate.”
“We’ve done the hard work: adapted our gear, reduced our effort, engaged in planning. But now we are punished with one-size-fits-all bans. That’s not science. That’s politics.”
About us
The Mid Channel Conference brings together fishers and representatives from Belgium, France, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands. Originally launched in the 1980s by the fishing sectors of our respective countries, the Conference has served for decades as a trusted platform for dialogue, cooperation, and the development of practical, cross-border solutions to shared challenges in the fishing industry.
One of the most pressing challenges today is the spatial squeeze, the continuously growing competition for space at sea from non-fishing activities such as offshore energy, conservation zones, maritime infrastructure etc. This trend is not merely a matter of coordination. It leads to a progressive loss of fishing grounds, pushing fishers out of productive areas and threatening the viability of their operations. Recognising the urgent need for a coordinated response, the Spatial Squeeze Working Group was established under the Mid Channel Conference.
Currently chaired by Falke De Sager, a representative of the Belgian fishing sector, the Spatial Squeeze Working Group brings together voices from across borders to formulate widely supported, realistic solutions to spatial planning issues. By working together, we aim to protect the space fishers need to operate responsibly, ensuring both the future of our sector and the resilience of Europe’s food systems.
The Spatial Squeeze Working Group is currently preparing a full and detailed response to the Stage 3 consultation.
Press contact
For media inquiries and further information, please contact:
Falke De Sager (Rederscentrale Policy Officer & Chair Spatial Squeeze Working Group )
• Email: falke.desager@rederscentrale.be
• Mobile: +32 470 57 20 89
It is hard to believe that the let-down of the government’s capitulation to the EU could pale almost into insignificance in a matter of days, but it has. Ministers and government-backing commentators were keen to tell us that we didn’t lose anything from that submission to the EU (we did, of course: see HERE) but there is no doubt this time. The Secretary of State for the Environment announced, via a handful of friendly newspapers and the social media posts of environmental lobbying groups, that the government intends to ban bottom trawling across 41 Marine Protected Areas.
Of course, most people would immediately think such a thing was sensible. It sounds so easy, and so positive, doesn’t it? And if it isn’t obvious to you, why then there is a multi-million-pound publicity campaign, backed by an Australian mining billionaire and lobbying groups funded by a couple of American social influence foundations that got their billions from oil drilling, to tell you how obvious it is. Who would dare to disagree when national treasures like David Attenborough and Stephen Fry have been wheeled out to attack fishermen from the privilege of the pedestals they sit on: utterly above criticism and the unimportant little people their barbs are aimed at.
Only a few weeks ago, our government was talking to the fishing industry about new management measures for MPAs that would be based on scientific evidence and would focus on restricting fishing over the particular features that might be damaged by it, while allowing it to continue in those parts of an MPA that fishing does not affect. A case can be made for a features-based approach like this, backed by evidence that harm is being done and that stopping fishing will reduce it. All that has gone out the window, now, however. Without any notice to fishermen or their representatives, the government has announced that it will close whole sites to bottom-trawling even though they know that trawling does no damage to large parts of those sites.
The campaigning has worked. The unimaginably wealthy have spoken. Reality doesn’t matter anymore. This ban will cause huge hardship to fishermen and their families and it will advance the cause of marine conservation no more than a far more targeted restriction would do. Coastal communities, working people, and the truth do not matter to this government, however. Our lives are a price they are willing to pay if it buys them an opportunity to curry favour with celebrities and the super wealthy and to pander to their supporters’ feelings about the environment, irrespective of the facts.
This is an astonishing attack on fishermen and coastal communities, from a government that already seems determined to go to war with farmers and rural communities. Before the election, they claimed that “food security is national security”. By that token, the harm they are bent on doing to the former would seem to suggest that they don’t really care very much about the latter.
Today, we learned more about a consultation on the proposed ban. Since the Environment Secretary has already gone on record about “the government’s plans to ban bottom trawling across 41 protected areas of English seas spanning 30,000 square kilometres”, however, anyone could be forgiven for doubting the sincerity of this ‘consultation’. Defra has already announced that “Evidence on the impact of social and economic impacts of the proposals may help in reshaping the proposals, but only insofar as is consistent with the MMO’s legal duties to support the achievement of MPA conservation objectives”. What a mockery this makes of the Fisheries Act and its requirement to balance social, economic, environmental and food production factors. MPA objectives are so broadly drawn and so vague, and so little work has been done to survey the real state on many of these sites, that almost any action could be justified by them. To say that the outcome of this consultation appears to be a foregone conclusion, is to put it mildly.
Fishermen and their representatives tried to affect government policy the hard way. By responding to endless consultations; by giving up days at sea to join – unpaid – working groups, forums, and meetings; by conducting, supporting, and funding research into new techniques and new technologies; by showing our willingness to coexist with other sectors and interests. In short, by patiently and carefully working out the best thing to do and then trying to persuade our government to make a decision based on the facts.
How stupid. We should have just got a billionaire to buy it for us.
Influence may be all in our post-truth age, but it is fickle. Campaigns come and go and so do governments. Beneath it all, however, there is an underlying reality that fisheries and conservation scientists work to describe and understand. Some of the leading names in that field have spoken out against untargeted, unscientific measures like the one this government is bent on forcing upon us. In chasing cheap and fleeting popularity, they are not just opposing fishermen and their communities, they are opposing some of the most significant scientific voices in their field. They are opposing the truth, and that matters.
Basing policy on these false foundations sets a terribly dangerous precedent. It will not produce outcomes that work for the environment and it will be devastating for the fishing families whose lives and livelihoods it ruins. And it will still not satisfy the campaigners. They will be back for more – if not from our industry, then from another. As long as someone with wealth and a desire to greenwash their actions is willing to pay them, the campaigners will never stop.
They have come for us today. Be warned: they may come for you tomorrow.
Our industry has been much in the public eye and in the news this week, as the UK and the EU reached a new deal on fisheries matters. A summit in London that had been billed as the start of a process of revisiting our post-Brexit relationship turned out also to be the end of it. Hurried talks behind the scenes had already ended in agreement. History repeated itself, as the EU again pushed for more concessions on fishing at the last possible moment and the UK again lost its nerve: caving in to pressure so that its government could announce a quickly done deal.
The deal reached in the 1970s, when the UK joined the EU, restricted the ability of British fishing boats to work in their own waters, while giving that right to European fishermen. The result was a huge decline in the British fishing industry and the start of a long period of economic hardship in coastal communities. European fleets, meanwhile, were helped to thrive: growing beyond the ability of their own waters to support them and becoming massively dependent on the freedom to take resources from Britain’s seas.
When we left the EU, there was very little immediate change for Britain’s fishermen, to their intense disappointment. The Trade and Cooperation Agreement that set the scene for relations between the UK and the EU allowed the previous situation to continue unchecked for another five years. We may have left the EU’s Common Fisheries Policy, but its boats could still work in our waters, up to the inshore line 6 miles from the coast.
The one saving grace in this otherwise bleak picture was the promise that, after five more years of business as usual, the UK would again be able to control access to its own waters. From 2026, access for European boats to UK would be negotiated on an annual basis. The same relationship that both the UK and EU already have with Norway, Iceland, and the Faroe Islands would apply between them as well.
The ability to determine who will fish in your national waters is a significant benefit to any nation, and a prerequisite for being considered an independent coastal state. Those other North Atlantic nations use that power to strengthen their hand in the annual negotiations over quotas and total allowable catches from the various fish stocks that they share.
Just as the UK was about to acquire that power for the first time in more than 50 years, our government has surrendered it.
They have agreed that EU boats can continue fishing freely in UK waters for the next 12 years. Instead of adding that vital card to our hand in the annual fisheries negotiations, we have given it to the other player and the UK fishing industry has received nothing of value in return.
The NFFO, in conjunction with UKAFPO, had been speaking to the government about the renegotiation of the TCA for some months. Knowing that the EU would want a multi-year deal on access to our waters, we suggested ways in which this negotiation could achieve benefits for our industry. Our negotiators could have insisted that European boats operate only outside of 12 miles from our coast. They could have used the leverage offered by the power to grant or decline access to obtain more quota for the British fishing fleet, to rebalance the unjust and inequitable distribution that has restricted our industry since the 1970s. They could have insisted on better collaboration on the management of non-quota species. They could have done any of this and more, but in the end did none of it, instead giving away the single best tool we will ever have for improving the lives of fishermen and fishing communities.
The prime minister and others have been determined to say that the fishing industry has not lost anything through this deal. They talk about it as a rollover of the existing arrangement, as though nothing has really changed. The reality is quite different.
If nothing had changed, the 2020 agreement would still be in force; the UK would soon have the power to decide annually who could access its waters; and benefits for the UK could be negotiated from anyone wanting to be granted that right. Instead, when the EU demanded to not have to abide by the deal it signed up to five years ago, our government capitulated to that demand and changed the deal.
Moreover, it would be quite untrue to say that the UK’s fishermen lost nothing from this change.
They lost the prospect of becoming more like the fishermen of Iceland, Norway and the Faroes: whose governments use access to national waters to secure them a better outcome from annual quota negotiations.
They lost the most straightforward and direct route to kickstarting sustainable growth in the UK’s fishing sector.
They lost the possibility of starting to remedy a 50 year-long injustice that has consistently disadvantaged fishermen and held back their communities.
They lost hope.
It has been suggested that access to our waters for the next 12 years was traded in return for an agreement to make exporting food and agricultural products between the UK and the EU simpler and less costly. Some have tried to claim that this will benefit the fishing industry, as though there was not already a good trade in fish and shellfish between the UK and the EU. True, that trade became more difficult after Brexit, but exporters adapted to the new systems and trade resumed.
No doubt trade in some products will become easier under this new agreement, but that is expected mostly to benefit supermarkets and exporters. It is completely fanciful to suggest that these merchants and wholesalers will pass any savings from the new system all the way down the supply chain to the men and women who actually catch the fish. Europe’s importers and consumers may benefit from being able to demand lower prices from those they buy from in the UK, but Britain’s fishermen are unlikely to see a penny.
In an attempt to deny this reality, much has been made of the fact that salmon and bivalve mollusc exports to the EU will now be easier, as though this were somehow a benefit to fishermen. These, of course, are farmed animals. In terms of trade, fish farming has no more in common with wild capture fisheries than sheep farming does. Commentators with no experience of the fishing industry who continually insist otherwise demonstrate only that their ignorance is matched by their arrogance.
The most comical attempt to pretend that fishermen will be happy with this deal has been the suggestion that giving away access to our waters provides them with ‘certainty’ and ‘stability’ that they welcome. I suppose knowing with absolute certainty that you are going to get nothing out of a deal every year is a stable situation. It’s not a very desirable one, though. Doctors describe a patient’s condition as ‘stable’ when no change is expected. That, of course, is precisely why we are so angry.
Some who seek to defend the indefensible have gone even further: criticising the UK fishing industry, as though we had asked for something unreasonable and been rightly denied it. Such dismissals of fishing generally centre around the idea that our industry is small: an insignificant contributor to GDP and therefore reasonably and justifiably surrendered to increase profitability elsewhere.
Fishing’s importance is minimised by describing the industry’s value only in terms of the price that fishermen receive for the catch that they land. All the other supporting trades and industries that depend entirely on that catch for their continued existence are ignored. All of the jobs in ports and fish markets; the engineers, ship builders, and hauliers; manufacturers of fishing gear and safety equipment; processors, retailers and restaurants – all these and more are ignored. Economic analysis of the Cornish fishing fleet, for example, has suggested that the seafood sector there supports 15 jobs on land for every fisherman at sea. Even if we look only at those people who work on the deck of a boat producing food, there are still around 11,000 of them. However much outsiders may want to diminish the importance fishing, it surely feels very important to those 11,000 families depending on it. For the commentators so keen to see fishing traded away to benefit a different sector, other people’s livelihoods are evidently a price they are willing to pay. They should have the honesty to admit that fact, rather deploying rhetorical tricks to pretend that fishing communities are simply too small to count.
This is not to say that nothing positive was announced for fishing this week. A fishing and coastal communities fund has been announced, worth £360 million, and this clearly has the potential to do some real good. As always, however, the devil is in the detail. The total sum appears to be based on a £30 million grant for each of the 12 years of access to British waters that has been surrendered to the EU. European boats use that access to take £450m-£500m of fish from UK waters every year. It is hardly an equal exchange. Moreover, if the plan is to give that money out in annual instalments, we must have real concerns about whether the fund will survive the two general elections (at least) and numerous government spending reviews that will inevitably take place over that time period.
The most important question is what exactly that money will be spent on. We have seen promises like this in the past, most notably the £100 million support fund for fisheries that was supposed to follow Britain’s exit from the EU. Very little of that sum ever materialised in a form that was accessible to fishermen. We hope that this government will work more closely with fishermen and their representatives, to ensure that this money goes directly to help an industry that has just seen its best hope for future growth and security given away. All doubts aside, the government has signalled that it wants to work with us by creating this fund and we can only take their intentions at face value and accept that opportunity.
For now, we wait to see exactly what is being offered and also to see the precise terms of the agreement has been reached with the EU. The fine details of that deal are still unknown, but it is the job of parliament to scrutinise the activity of government and so we will presumably know more when our elected representatives are shown the terms of the proposal and debate them. On Tuesday, the prime minister did not respond when asked how parliament would have its say on the fisheries portion of this deal, which is not reassuring. Nevertheless, he had previously promised that “none of this can go through without legislation”, so we can assume that the full and frank scrutiny that is the purpose of parliament will occur, so that the rest of us can understand exactly what it is that our government has done and how it will affect us in the future.
Life and business will go on for fishermen and the communities they support. We have lost much of what little was gained when we left the European Union, but we have not lost our pride in the fundamental and necessary things that our industry does. We provide food, jobs, and the continuation of a long and honourable heritage. These are things that matter far more to people who live on our coasts than some of those who work in Westminster appear to appreciate. Indeed, if the messages of support that have poured into the NFFO this week are anything to go by, they matter very much to a lot of people, all over the UK.
Those who have been so quick to dismiss and diminish us this week should perhaps reflect on that.
Giving the EU twelve years of guaranteed access to UK waters up to the six-mile inshore limit gives away the best card that we still had in our hand in fisheries discussions with Europe. This surrenders the best prospect that the fishing industry and coastal communities had for growth over the coming decade. We had reason to believe that our government understood the economic, symbolic and conservation value of reclaiming exclusive access for UK boats to our territorial waters within 12 miles of the coast. Clearly, however, they did not value such things as much as their European counterparts.
The Prime Minister and EU have claimed that the SPS agreement will benefit the UK fishing industry, in the form of boosted exports. It is true that it may help producers of farmed shellfish and salmon, as well as the biggest retailers and exporters, but it is very unlikely that any savings from reduced export costs will be passed down to the men and women who go to sea. If the Government has a plan to ensure these cost savings go down the supply chain, we are eager to hear it and happy to work with them on it.
Moving forward, the Government must work hard to rebuild trust in the fishing industry and in coastal communities, where fishing remains integral to their economy and identity. Many people in these communities will now think the Government does not care about them.
The Fishing and Coastal Growth Fund announced today sounds significant, but the devil will be in the detail. We need the Government to work closely with us, to ensure the money is actually spent in ways that directly benefit fishermen. There must be a long term plan to help fishing business to grow and coastal communities to thrive. Having given away our best tool for achieving that, the task will be harder now, but it is no less important.
The NFFO wants to continue working closely with the Government, for the benefit of our industry and the communities we support. With significant existential threats, including the rush to expand offshore wind farms onto productive fishing grounds, we have had nothing but bad news for too long. The Government must show that it cares for our sector and for people on the coast. Close and constructive collaboration on the Fishing and Coastal Growth Fund and a national strategy on fishing would be a good start.
The Trade and Co-operation Agreement that governs many aspects of our relationship with Europe is under review. The fisheries chapter – source of great dissatisfaction to UK fishermen for the past four and a half years – appears to be one of the major talking points.
The EU got almost everything that it wanted out of the original agreement, including continued access to fish in the UK’s waters. That access provision, however, was to last only 5 years, after which it would need to be agreed annually. EU fishermen, predictably, do not relish the uncertainty that would come with annual access negotiations. Many of them have been living beyond their national means and developing businesses that are entirely dependent on the freedom to take resources from British waters. The EU, therefore, has been asking to revise the terms of the TCA, to acquire a right of access that will last for multiple years, perhaps even permanently.
Even before the negotiations began in earnest, rumours started to spread. First, we heard that the UK was about to surrender access to our waters in return for an agreement by the EU to buy British-made weapons. Next came the suggestion that access was simply going to be given away for free, as a gesture of goodwill to smooth the process of negotiating a better deal for some other industry. Most recently, we hear that access will apparently be exchanged for an agreement to make it easier for the UK to export food and drink to the EU and vice versa.
Three mutually exclusive rumours, within the space of a fortnight.
Of course, we have to remember that the two parties are in the middle of a complex and rapidly developing negotiation: it is perfectly possible that each of those stories was in fact true at the time. Times change and so do negotiating positions and, in the absence of concrete information, rumour takes over.
All we know for certain is that no agreement has been announced yet. The government has told us that they continue to negotiate and are set on getting a good deal for fishermen. On Tuesday, a spokesperson for the Prime Minister – echoing the sentiments of Food Security Minister Daniel Zeichner in the House of Commons recently – told journalists: “we’re looking for an overall arrangement that’s beneficial to our fishers, and we’re determined to continue to support those communities.”
This is broadly positive, but the lack of specifics is a problem. The government has said that it will not provide a running commentary on the state of the negotiations, nor reveal its negotiating position. This makes sense as a tactic before talks begin, but now that they have started, what good purpose is served by our government continuing to keep its position hidden from us?
The EU’s negotiators have already spoken publicly about what they seek to get for their fishermen, so there are no secrets about what the EU wants. Furthermore, the British government must by now have revealed its negotiating position to the other side. Our government’s position on fishing is therefore only a secret from us and we cannot help but speculate about why they do not want us to know it.
The Labour Party in opposition was a strong supporter of the fishing industry on several crucial issues, but this has not yet translated into positive action now that they are in government. If they are indeed fighting to improve on the TCA deal for British fishermen, as they have promised, then everyone would benefit from them explaining exactly what it is that they intend to do. Admittedly, this could lead to embarrassment if they fail to get the deal that they hoped for, but I would submit that it would be easier to accept our negotiators losing if we knew that they had at least put up a good fight on our behalf. The outcome of these talks could be deeply consequential for the UK’s fishermen. It could secure what we have and create the conditions for sustainable growth; or it could constrain our fleets and our freedom to manage our own waters. We deserve an honest, adult dialogue with the people who are negotiating on our behalf.
The Conservative Party on Tuesday made its priorities for the fishing industry crystal clear and I am very pleased to see how closely they mirror the position that has already been articulated jointly by the NFFO and UKAFPO. Like us, they have said that they believe that any grant of permission to fish in UK waters should be used to gain benefits for the UK’s fishermen. Also like us, they want our territorial waters, within 12 miles of the coast, to be fished exclusively by UK vessels and they want to see a fairer distribution of quota. These are hardly extreme positions: they are no more than what any independent coastal state should have.
Maintaining our independence is the key reason why we do not want to see any deal on fishing to be tied to an unrelated agreement. Take, for example, the most recent suggestion, that the UK may swap access to our waters for an improved deal on agricultural and food exports. We are told that the EU wants the two to be entirely linked, so that if their access to our waters is ever restricted, the export deal will be terminated. In practical terms, the prospect of a sudden end to our ability to export food and drink products to the EU would be so disruptive and expensive that this would effectively give the EU permanent access.
The implications of this would be extremely wide-ranging. Our efforts to manage fishing in our waters would be severely constrained. Any new fisheries regulation could be claimed to be a restriction on the EU’s freedom to exploit our fish resources and threats to end our food export agreements could follow. Conservation measures could meet the same response, as could the government’s plans to licence more offshore wind farms. We only have to look at how the EU responded to the UK’s conservation measures on sand eels to see how readily they are willing to use trade disputes in an attempt to control the management of the UK’s waters. If we make this even easier for them to do, by tying fisheries access to export agreements, Britain’s maritime independence will be a fiction.
Some rumours imply that a deal is done; others say it’s all to play for. Either way, it seems likely that the decisions made in the next few days may have consequences – either positive or negative – that will be felt for years.
Ocean is a powerful piece of work and a passionate statement of the film makers’ affection for the world’s seas. Much has been made of the King’s attendance at the film’s premiere, where he was joined by a variety of celebrities and international campaigning organisations. Sadly, though, for a film that has much to say about fishing, fishermen and fisheries scientists were notable by their absence. This wasn’t really an event for the likes of us.
This is a great shame, because the film makes some significant points about the need to protect the seas and the fish stocks that all of us in the fishing industry depend on for our livelihoods. The debate around marine protection is a vital one. What is missing here is the understanding that those of us who work on and in connection with the sea every day have more to contribute to it than most.
As a work designed to entertain and influence, Ocean is outstanding, but – by its nature – indiscriminate. The film makes claims about the impact of bottom trawling that are not recognisable in Britain’s modern fishing fleet.
There is no point in denying that this fishery has had problems in the past, but much the same can be said of many things that we consider successful today. David Attenborough started his path to fame and fortune by filming expeditions to capture wild animals to be exhibited to the paying customers of London Zoo. Both presenter and zoo have distanced themselves from their pasts. Both have gone on to become beloved national treasures, all previous transgressions long forgiven and determinedly forgotten.
The same should be true for our trawler fleet. Insofar as it relates to the UK – and, of course, most of the film does not – the narrative promoted by Ocean is a story about a fishery of the past. New technology and more scientific, evidence-led fisheries management has led to a present-day fleet that is increasingly selective in its gear and restricted in its activities to those areas that can sustain it. Those successes are proof of the fishing industry’s commitment to continually improved sustainability. If we are going to continue sustainably producing food from the sea, a diverse fleet is essential. Bottom trawling is a relatively small, but important, part of that in the UK today.
Is this true everywhere in the world, though? Of course not. We in the fishing industry should not shy away from acknowledging problems where they exist and calling for them to be resolved. Quite aside from the protection of the marine environment simply being the right thing to do, it is commercial common sense. Britain has some of the most heavily regulated fisheries in the world – to our credit – and the fishermen who work diligently within that system should not have to compete against products harvested to far lower environmental standards elsewhere.
It must be remembered, too, that fishing is not the only problem that the oceans face. Clearly, there is only so much ground that one short film can cover, but marine management is such a complex and truly important topic that we can only regret that more couldn’t be mentioned here. If you leave out pieces of the jigsaw, you don’t see the whole picture.
Nothing was said about aggregate dredging; about subsea cables; about seabed mining. There was no discussion of the tens of thousands of square kilometres of seabed that our government plans to lease to multinational energy giants, to build their wind power stations on. The negative impacts of these mammoth developments have recently been highlighted by a major ICES report and the future prospects of our seas cannot be properly understood without including them.
A partial understanding of the problem will not yield solutions that work. Anyone who truly cares about improving the state of our oceans and ensuring that humans can continue to use their resources – as we have for thousands of years – in a sustainable manner, should want to ensure that any actions taken are effective. Promoting ‘conservation’ measures that will not achieve any tangible outcomes will waste time and resources, and reduce confidence in the whole endeavour of marine conservation, to the benefit of no-one.
I think that this is a point of view that many of the people involved in producing and promoting Ocean can understand and support.
Dr Andrew Forrest, whose foundation provided much of the funding for this film, may have made his billions in mining, but his doctorate is in marine ecology and he is a serious contributor to the field of ocean conservation. Likewise, no one should doubt the real and deep commitment of King Charles to environmental causes. These are not the sort of people who want shallow gestures that will capture the public attention for a moment and then be forgotten. Nor will poorly-conceived measures, that hurt fishermen and damage our food supplies without achieving any actual conservation benefits, satisfy their drive for meaningful change.
To do that, we need the conversation about ocean conservation to be rooted in solid evidence, credible research, and the wealth of experience that already exists.
My challenge to all the passionate, committed people who have made and promoted Ocean is this: if you want to see how our fisheries really work, and to understand the potential of sustainable fisheries management, come and talk to us.
Talk to the fisheries managers and scientists who are devising innovative, evidence-based management plans for fisheries all around our coast. Talk to the gear technologists who are helping to minimise ground contact and reduce bycatch even further. Talk to the engineers exploring zero-carbon alternatives to fossil fuels, to power fishing boats. Above all, talk to the fishermen who collaborate with all these people, lending vast expertise to drive, refine and improve their work.
Come to any fishing port, at any time, and we will have some compelling stories of our own to tell you.
In a move to adapt the NFFO Regional Committee structure to meet the current needs of the industry, we have adopted a port visit model to trial improved engagement with our members and wider industry. Feedback from many members is that there are too many meetings and there is reluctance to meet outside of their port unless the need is great. The NFFO feel that engaging with fishermen directly in their home port, in an informal manner and without an agenda, encourages better dialogue and ensures we are hearing the key priorities and issues from across a region and from many different voices.
In March we visited ports in East Anglia and the South West, these included Boston, Kings Lynn, Wells-Next-The-Sea, Cromer, Lowestoft, Brixham, Salcombe, Newlyn, Mevagissey, Bideford and Plymouth. There were common themes across both regions visited as well as regional, or even port-specific, challenges.
A common theme across both regions, and many other areas that reach out to the NFFO, is the ongoing challenges with services provided by the MCA. There is a lack of clarity, differing service standards and contradictory advice being given by different surveyors and in different ports. There is also a fear that if complaints are raised, there may subsequently be negative consequences for those who raise them. NFFO Safety and Training lead, Charles Blyth, has been working on ensuring service standards from the MCA are consistent and clear, although the message does not seem to have reached some of those who are inspecting vessels. Charles encourages that where there are genuine problems, formal complaints should be submitted through the correct channels, to ensure there is an evidence chain demonstrating the issues. We will continue to press for professional, cordial and most importantly consistent engagement with the fishing industry from all government agencies. The NFFO also supports the Seafish safety folder, that can help fishermen record and track all their safety paperwork. It was also recognised in both regions that the Fishing Animateurs is a fantastic scheme that supports industry in accessing grants when available.
Recruitment of new fishermen and retention of those already active is a key priority that was mentioned in both regions. Particularly for those in the non-sector, there is a shortage of workers to meet current demand and a fear that there is no new blood coming into the industry. Reputational issues, start-up costs, access to quota, legislative burden, access to fish/shellfish, licensing costs and career prospects are all suggested as barriers to recruitment. There is also concern that where there are training courses for new entrants, there needs to be increased focus on the practical skills required by the fishing industry (i.e. splicing, mending, echo sounders) alongside the health and safety and legislative elements of the training. It is perceived that many new entrants lack some of the practical skills needed to fishing, therefore when they join a vessel, they feel ill-prepared and may leave the sector. The NFFO recently encouraged the Fisheries APPG to discuss recruitment and employment in the fishing industry, raising this issue to parliamentarians to hear evidence and discuss the issue.
Concerns raised in East Anglia included market access issues for mussels grown in Class B waters; ongoing liaison issues with the offshore wind sector, and regional management challenges. The lack of opportunity to diversify when fisheries are closed for management reasons or new opportunities arise, such as increased bass on the ground, is creating increased challenges for those within the region. There was confusion around enforcement of regulations on bass caught as bycatch in pot fisheries, and the lack of attention given to the recreational take of bass.
There was a general feeling in most ports visited that engagement with either regional or national management is low. There is severe concern about the administrative charges being imposed by EIFCA for the different permit systems needed for different fisheries. The NFFO’s position is that permit charges should not exceed the costs incurred to administer the permit system. Costs associated with permits in several IFCA districts appear increasingly to be disproportionate to the costs incurred, further disadvantaging inshore fishermen. There is also concern that, whilst the fishing industry financially support the regional cockle surveys, they have little input into how those surveys are conducted and who is responsible for delivering them.
There is a growing need to improve relations between regulators and fishermen in some ports in the region; to ensure that fisheries are encouraged and supported in engaging with, and consulting on management issues whilst working towards balancing fishing opportunities against conservation goals. An issue specific to Boston is the challenges associated with the new flood defence, inhibiting access. Communication on the project appears to be poor. The NFFO have offered support to the Boston fishermen when needed.
Engagement in the South West appears to be better when compared to other regions. Many fishermen felt that, whilst they have issues with fisheries management, they are well informed and they acknowledged attempts from authorities to engage regularly. This was not the case in all ports, however, and fishermen in those places did not feel that their voices were being heard.
The greatest challenge facing inshore fishermen in the South West is the continuing zero TAC advice on pollack. There appears to be little hope for the future within the inshore fishery, and fears have been expressed that pollack fisheries will follow the same route that bass fisheries took few years ago. There is a willingness within industry to engage around pollack fishing and to investigate technical measures and other options to improve stock recovery whilst maintaining economic viability within the fleets that rely upon it.
Concern was expressed that many actions within the FMPs relevant to the region are not being implemented quickly enough, or addressing key needs, especially in the face of ecological changes in the South West, such as the influx of octopus in the region.
Again, there were port specific issues such as the local council and local environmental groups wishing to close an area of the local bay in Mevagissey to fishing. These are the kind of issues that the NFFO can actively engage with and we are experienced at supporting fishermen faced with spatial restrictions due to other interests attempting to take control of areas of the sea.
The NFFO recognise the value in quayside engagement and will be following this model for the other regions over the coming year. We will also attend to regional issues whenever requested, to provide support as issues arise. We aim to ensure the voices of our regional members are being heard and to using the information they provide to develop the NFFO’s policies and workstreams whilst offering support where needed.
The TCA was an astonishingly good deal for the EU. The agreement that Boris Johnson’s government made fell far short of what it promised. In particular, the pretence that the UK would become an independent coastal state was fatally undermined by the permission given for European vessels to fish in UK Waters up to 6 miles from our shore.
The only bright point was that this concession was not permanent. In 2026, when the TCA is renewed, that free access comes to an end. From this point onwards, unless a new and different agreement is reached, access for EU boats to UK Waters, and vice versa, must be negotiated afresh every year.
For decades, European fisherman have done very nicely out of the deal that was done when the UK first joined what later became the EU. They’ve had a good run and profited very handsomely from their free access to the resources in Britain’s waters.
As we keep hearing these days, however, the world has now changed.
Britain isn’t part of the EU anymore. A deal was done when we left, and the EU signed up to it. In most respects, it was a remarkably good deal for the EU’s fishermen, but they appear now to be waking up to the fact that, while Boris Johnson cheerfully gave away most of the family silver, there is one small respect in which the EU did not quite get everything it could ever want.
Free access to the UK’s waters gives European vessels access to rich and healthy fishing grounds. Only finding out whether they will have the freedom to exploit that on an annual basis will deprive European fishing businesses of the certainty that they would have with permanent access rights. Or, of course, if they stuck to fishing in their own waters.
Businesses like certainty: it helps with planning and with raising capital to invest in new assets. Access to the UK’s waters is, in other words, valuable and something that most businesses know about things of value is that, if you want them, you generally have to pay for them.
Of course, if you want to act like a bully, or a child, rather than a businessperson, you could always try to simply take the things you want. In recent days, we have heard statements from various EU spokespeople to the effect that, if the UK does not reach a new agreement, favourable to the EU, on fisheries matters it will be excluded from proposed cooperation agreements on defence matters. Before that, we had more or less veiled threats that, unless we surrendered control over access to our fisheries, British products would be barred from European markets.
The British government must not capitulate to such outrageous demands. Nor, I would suggest, should it take the latest threats too seriously.
Are we really to believe that European member-state governments will sabotage an agreement for their own defence and security, unless the UK gives up the right to control access to its waters? If so, then any sensible observer giving the matter a moment’s thought must surely question whether this defence pact is really all that serious.
It strains credulity to suggest that the Swedish government will happily surrender its citizens’ safety, in the face of Russian aggression and American idiosyncrasy, so that French fishermen can have access to British waters without paying for the privilege. European solidarity is all well and good, but it is hard to believe that many European citizens would be willing to imperil their own security in order to unfairly enrich a handful of fishermen in a different nation. We shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that the EU may negotiate as a bloc, but it is still made up of separate nations, whose governments are answerable to their own electorates.
Our government must not cave in to this clumsy attempt at bullying by a few European politicians who seem happy to appear to be playing games with the safety and lives of their citizens. The revision of the TCA needs cool heads and calm words. Each affected sector should be considered according to its own needs and where one party seeks to change the deal that was done in 2020, it should expect to pay for the additional benefits it hopes to acquire. We need maturity and a business-like approach from our representatives, not the performative posturing that we have seen from the playground bullies that some of our European neighbours seem to be saddled with.
In this week’s Westminster Hall debate on fisheries, almost every speaker sought assurances from the government that it would not capitulate to this unfair pressure. Encouragingly, Minister Zeichner, responding on behalf of the government, spoke of his determination to get a ‘good deal’ for the UK’s fishermen. Long may this confidence and resolve continue.
There is still a lack of clarity on what a longer-term strategy looks like on how the stocks will recover and how commercial fisheries can remain viable when access to resources is being eroded at every turn. Last year saw a Zero TAC advice from ICES which resulted in a small bycatch allowance for the UK fleet. The aim of the advice was to allow the stock size to recover by 20%, an integral step on the road to full recovery. However, ICES advice for 2025 is still a Zero TAC with a reduced bycatch allowance compared to 2024, for example Area 7 has seen a 17% reduction in bycatch TAC for 2025. Therefore, it can be assumed that the Zero TAC advice is not working, despite the overwhelming impacts to the sectors that relied on pollack as the backbone of their business. We have to ask ourselves why this stringent measure, the most restrictive advice to come from ICES, is not working.
It was felt by all commercial fisheries in the meeting that the reason for this is the complete lack of control the recreational sector is under. ICES acknowledges that recreational removals of Pollack is likely to be a large component of the catch. This was supported by scientists (from the Pollack FISP project) presenting at the RFG as a reasonable assessment that reflects what their data shows. Data from the Pollack FISP that was presented, highlighted that a single recreational charter landed 400kg of pollack in a single trip, it is hard to believe that this is purely for personal consumption. Whilst this was an outlier, average catch of pollack by recreational fishers taking part in the project was 40kg/trip over 807 trips – a potential total removal of over 32 tonnes from the subset of vessels sampled as part of the project.
We have to ask if pollack fisheries are truly considered to have a zero TAC when recreational removals are so great and currently uncontrolled. Defra are keen to roll out voluntary guidelines for the recreational sector to help get a handle on the issue and they wish to give the guidelines a chance to work before seeking further restrictions. The reason for this, as always, a lack of data. However, the Pollack FISP, funded by Defra to the amount of £859,400 is essentially already providing substantial evidence to the scale of the problem. Commercial fisheries see the precautionary principle used when data is lacking, why is this not the same for recreational fisheries, surely this established method should be applied to all removals.
It is a growing concern that commercial fisheries always feel the most impact when compared to the needs of the recreational sector. This is not specific to pollack but is evidenced in bass fisheries and also the fact recreational take of crustacean fisheries is excluded from welfare concerns that are applied to commercial fisheries. In the new world of the UK Fisheries Act and fisheries management plans, we would expect to see more effort given to understanding and controlling the recreational sector to create a level playing field with the commercial sector.
Today’s Ministerial Statement from Defra certainly demonstrates the Labour government’s green credentials: they are enthusiastically recycling a policy snatched from the wreckage of their Conservative predecessors.
For years, we have been told that offshore wind farms are a clean energy panacea, generating electricity with none of the negative environmental effects of fossil fuels. While their benefits as a low carbon power source cannot be denied, the halo that so many have been so keen to place above them is becoming seriously tarnished. People have become increasingly aware of their short lifespan, disruptive construction processes and vulnerability to attack. Now it seems there is acknowledgement that they are damaging the environment too.
Time and again, the authorities have granted permission for offshore wind farms to be built on the basis of environmental impact assessment reports invariably stating that each proposed development will cause no significant harm. Now those same developments are apparently so damaging that a slew of new marine protected areas is necessary to make up for it. Knowing this, will we now pause in our headlong rush to industrialise Britain’s seas, until we understand how successive governments got it all so wrong?
Of course not. Nothing, it seems will reduce the government’s enthusiasm for allowing foreign energy giants to build power stations in our waters. Instead, we will allow them to carry on as before, damaging the marine environment in one location, while pretending that this can somehow all be made better by ‘protecting’ the sea somewhere else.
Clearly, this announcement is just the start of a process and a lot is left unsaid. We do not know how large these MPAs will be; where they will be located; or exactly how they will be managed. The fact that fishermen are mentioned so explicitly in the Ministerial Statement is a worrying sign of how obviously our industry is in the firing line, but also a positive indicator of the government’s willingness to engage with us. Indeed, it is quite refreshing to hear politicians acknowledging that the decisions they are taking will impact the fishing industry. There has been far too much empty rhetoric about ‘coexistence’ and ‘colocation’ in the past. Now it is admitted that these proposals have the potential to damage fishing businesses, perhaps we can start to have the honest conversations and do the difficult work necessary to minimise and mitigate the harm that most of us in the fishing industry have seen coming for years.
The Fisheries Act and the Joint Fisheries Statement are very clear in their commitment to treating environmental, social, economic and food supply concerns equally. We assume that the government will abide by the law and carefully balance these concerns in any decision that it makes about this new system of MPAs. We assume also that the commitment to base marine management measures on the best available science will also be upheld and these new MPAs will not be more examples of lines drawn on charts to satisfy the desire to control the sea and ban things, with no coherent conservation purpose served.
Fishermen depend on healthy seas. If compensating for the damage done by the power industry requires fisherman to be displaced, then it is only just for them to be compensated for this damage to their livelihoods. If not, then the old ‘polluter pays’ principle of environmental management will be turned on its head: the energy companies will continue to pollute, while fishermen pay for it.
There is a solution to this problem, of course. If fishermen are going to be pushed aside for yet more MPAs, it is possible to make room for them. The Johnson government’s disastrous Brexit deal gave away access to the UK’s territorial waters between 6 and 12 miles to the EU. Many of its fishing boats continue to work there, further constraining British fishermen. When the Trade and Cooperation Agreement that governs our relationship with Europe is revisited in 2026, our new government has the opportunity to finally do something different to its predecessor. It can stand up to the EU’s demands to continue the current unsustainable access arrangements; assert the UK’s autonomy as an independent coastal state, and retake all of our territorial waters for UK fishermen. They will be far better able to withstand this latest increase in spatial squeeze as a result.
Warm words about the importance of fishing and about food security are always welcome, but it is time that they were followed by action. This is the perfect opportunity for Labour to show that they are made of sterner stuff than their predecessors and, at least in this regard, to start managing the UK’s seas for the benefit of its own people.
It is a key principle of modern fisheries management that scientific evidence should underpin the decision-making process. In the context of these negotiations, this means the annual ICES fisheries advice. People who either do not understand the process, or else are willfully disingenuous in their depiction of it, present ICES advice as though it were commandments inscribed on tablets of stone. The word of God: omniscient; infallible; any variation from it, an act of gross immorality.
It is nothing of the sort, of course. There is a healthy academic literature around the misuse and misinterpretation of ICES advice and it would be a refreshing (if entirely fanciful) prospect, were some of the commentators who so uncritically parrot attack lines from the anti-seafood lobby to inform themselves better by reading some of these more objective sources.
ICES does not set out to dictate fisheries management outcomes. It publishes advice: information given to assist others to take decisions. It is not simply an objective statement of definitive facts about the size and composition of each stock. The available data is nowhere near comprehensive enough for that. Instead, ICES advice incorporates assumptions, conjecture, and subjective judgments alongside hard evidence. Nor does it give a single definitive statement for each species. People who seek a scientific-looking figleaf to disguise their antipathy towards others eating fish, may fixate on the ‘headline’ advice, but this is simply one catching scenario among several that ICES evaluates for each stock. It is generally the scenario that a mathematical model suggests will bring the stock to maximum sustainable yield level in the shortest possible time. This isn’t the only way to manage a fishery, however. It is perfectly legitimate to work over a longer period: to accept that a management plan will not achieve perfection immediately, but will instead reach the same endpoint over a more realistic timescale.
And really, why not do that? Why not allow food production to continue, jobs to be sustained, and coastal communities to remain economically secure, at the expense of waiting a year or two longer for an estimated number of fish to reach a point that a computer simulation suggests might be good? We have established the whole apparatus of ICES and set it to work examining multiple different management scenarios. Insisting that we should only ever follow the headline advice is like getting multiple quotes for every purchase but only ever choosing the dearest one. Such an approach is overly simplistic and will in many cases fail to achieve the objectives of good fisheries management.
We need to remember that the purpose of fisheries management is not conservation: it is the production of food in a way that can be sustained indefinitely. The Fisheries Act 2020 and the Joint Fisheries Statement both recognise that this requires social and economic considerations to be incorporated into management decisions, as well as environmental factors. I would argue that, where a region has seen TAC cuts for several years in a row, preventing fishing businesses from becoming unviable must be a central consideration in this. Further cuts should be avoided, or at the very least minimised, unless absolutely essential for the survival of particular stocks. More moderate advice from ICES should be preferred to the inflexible and limited headline statement. The objective of bringing about national benefit includes retaining jobs and producing food, not just prioritising ecological goals on unnecessarily strict timescales.
We have become accustomed to NGO commentators demanding to know how the environment in the abstract has been taken into account when TACs are set – increasingly accompanied by threats of legal action if they don’t like the outcomes. The only thing that this approach sustains is controversy. It would make a truly refreshing change if they showed the same interest was in understanding how evidence of social and economic needs were incorporated into the agreements.
It shouldn’t be that government only focuses those parts of the Fisheries Act and the JFS that the wealthy threaten to sue them about, but it is hard to argue that this has not been the case in recent years. There is a new government in office for these annual negotiations, however. We are watching see if it will be business as usual, or whether they care enough about our industry and our communities to do things better.
The Young Fishermen Network; the first and only initiative of its kind in the UK, aims to reverse this trend by driving recruitment of new crew members, support the retention of current fishermen through social events and mentorship; and amplify the voices of the next generation of fishermen.
Aiden Mclary is one particularly passionate and articulate member of the Young Fishermen Network, Aiden is a 24 year young fisherman born and bred in St Ives fishing harbour.
“I benefit from being a member of the YFN as it allows me to meet new people from all parts of the county and beyond, together we share ideas about different fisheries, giving me an insight into how other youngsters work.”
YFN is a large network of young commercial fishermen promoting their viable lifestyles and increasing recruitment into the fishing industry. The network evolved out of the CFPO Youth Board following two main principles; recruitment and retention. Together we are tackling the barriers facing new entrants. Our events enhance skills by introducing network members to experienced skippers, and strengthen relationships between fishing ports. Skills progression is a huge aim during events, focusing on perfecting mending certain gear types, led by David Warwick; Gear innovation Manager at SeaFish and Freddie Bates; Seafood Cornwall Training Instructor.
The Young Fishermen Network has bloomed over its first year, multiplying its active instagram account by 4, reaching 2500 engaging followers. Our social media allows us to share the everyday life of fishermen, taking the public behind the scenes for a day at sea. We have now partnered with schools to educate students on the fishing industry and provide insights into where their seafood comes from. Our winter calendar is filled with school visits, offering an invaluable opportunity for young people to explore a potential future in fishing and improve public perception of the industry.
Follow our progress on Instagram and YouTube @youngfishermennetwork and for further interest email matilda.phillips@cornwallrcc.org.uk
The NFFO has been campaigning for a national strategy for fishing for some time now and the need is only becoming more apparent with every passing day.
Everyone who works at or lives by the sea has long realised that the ways that it is being used have changed fundamentally in recent years. Once, it carried goods and people, and it produced food. Now it also produces electricity; it supplies building materials; it carries our electronic communications; it gives up fossil fuels from beneath it and has carbon emissions and nuclear waste buried in their place; it is ‘conserved’; it is a playground.
As the NFFO has consistently pointed out, this transition has occurred piecemeal. The sea has become a new frontier, open for exploration and exploitation by whoever has the power to stake a claim. No strategy has underpinned this free-for-all and we have warned on numerous occasions that, if this is allowed to continue, those users of the sea without deep pockets or powerful political connections will be soon squeezed out. Fishers are firmly in this category. Despite pursuing a calling that has helped to feed the people of these islands for millennia, they must pay for a licence to pursue their livelihoods, but in doing so acquire no right to use it. Farmers can own the land they work, but fishers can’t own their fishing grounds. Our seabed is owned by the Crown Estate, which leases out portions of its property portfolio for profit. This makes it possible for others to take parts of the sea that we depend on for food production and effectively privatise them: developing that area for their own benefit, in such a way that excludes fishing.
This is happening already. The Crown Estate has recently announced plans to lease out the seabed for offshore wind farm construction. They hope to see 125 GW of new offshore electricity generating capacity leased out by 2050. At the same time, the Scottish government has plans for power stations generating up to 42 GW north of the border. Much of this new development will involve floating wind farms, which are acknowledged to be incompatible with fishing activity. At an estimated size of 250Km2 per gigawatt (and acknowledging that some existing wind farms take up significantly more space than that), this will occupy 41,750 km2 of sea space – a little under twice the area of Wales.
This represents the industrialisation of the marine environment on an almost unimaginable scale and its justification has not been made clear. In addition to this planned 167 GW of new generating capacity at sea, there are plans for 24 GW of new nuclear power generation on land and the government has already announced support for 2 GW of new solar power, with more to come. The UK currently consumes around 30 GW of electricity and is already capable of generating almost all of that domestically. Clearly, as we switch to using more electricity to heat homes and power vehicles that demand will increase, but it is surely stretching credulity to assume that it will increase by 550% in the next 26 years. No doubt the multinational energy giants – almost all non-UK corporations – that build and control the offshore power stations in UK waters will find a way to make even larger fortunes from them, but the benefit to the people of the UK is opaque, particularly when their construction may come at the cost of the UK’s marine environment, food security and coastal jobs.
Alongside the offshore construction gold rush, there are increasingly loud calls for large parts of the sea to be closed to fishing because of ‘nature’. 38% of the UK’s EEZ is already subject to some form of conservation designation. The goal of ‘nature recovery’ is cited at every turn. Even the Crown Estate uses the phase continuously – and seemingly without irony – when discussing how it plans to lease off the seabed for industrial development. There is a distinct reluctance to define terms here. ‘Recovery’ implies return to a prior condition, but what point in the past is it intended that we should reproduce? Before offshore developers started digging up the seabed? Before the age of modern shipping? Before humans used the sea at all? Whichever historical point we choose, how are we supposed to know what the marine environment was like back then, so that we know what actions to take to recover that state? Given the almost complete lack of baseline scientific surveys conducted to support the marine conservation process, we don’t even have a particularly clear idea about what the marine environment is like now.
We are doing more things in the sea now than at any time in human history, so why is it almost always just fishing that the loudest proponents of ‘nature’ want to prohibit? It all starts to look a bit performative: promoting a sense of permanent crisis, while placing the blame only on those without the money or power to defend themselves. The double standard is striking: theatrical dismay at every fishing net that skims the seabed to produce food, but seeming unconcern about the thousands of square kilometres that will be dug up, trenched and continually scoured by anchor chains to accommodate new power stations.
Contradictions like this abound. We must conserve the marine environment, yet also build power stations there that far exceed our energy needs. We will protect the security of our food supply, but restrict fishing on the shakiest of evidential foundations. We must take urgent action to combat climate change, but also restrict one of the least carbon intensive sources of dietary protein. Growth is vital and coastal communities will be supported, but we consistently privilege the demands of foreign corporations and the self-appointed and well-funded champions of undefined ‘nature’ over the economic and social wellbeing of working-class people.
If any of this was being done in pursuit of an ultimate aim, for the betterment of the UK at large, we would have no grounds for complaint. We elect parliamentarians to take decisions about the future of our nation. Very often those decisions are truly difficult. Once taken, they are very likely to bring hardship to some even as they benefit the majority. As long as such decisions are taken in full possession of the facts, however, with a clear underlying rationale and an understanding of the consequences, then – while we may not like the outcome – there can be no injustice in the process. That is emphatically not true here, however. We are drifting towards an unplanned future, where short-term thinking and empty but eye-catching slogans have benefitted the few but disadvantaged the many, while no-one takes responsibility.
We need a plan. Now.
The UK needs a national fishing strategy that will stop our industry being squeezed out of the marine space; will protect core fishing grounds and promote sustainable harvesting; will improve safety and working conditions; will support job creation; and will allow fishing to realise its potential as a core part of revitalised coastal economies. This will not be easy, but it is possible – and the benefits could be enormous.
The Crown Estate has released an ambitious new route map for the development of Britain’s seas. This, and the ‘Future of Offshore Wind’ report that accompanies it, envisage a seascape radically changed from what we have known until now.
Their vision – of up to 140GW of offshore wind farms being installed or planned by 2040 – calls for tens of thousands of square kilometres of the UK’s waters to be industrialised.
This is not a project to make new use of unproductive space, however. Although they may look empty at a glance, our seas are already crowded with activity. Much of the vast area that the Crown Estate is considering leasing out for development is used to produce food.
Fishermen have worked Britain’s seas for thousands of years. In recent decades they have had to make way for many new industries that have laid claim to their traditional grounds, but the latest proposals from the Crown Estate have the potential to disrupt fishing on a scale beyond anything previously imagined.
It is important not to overreact. The maps that the Crown Estate has published are shocking, but they do not represent the total space that will be developed. Having laid down this marker, they will now embark on a process of refining the areas, before settling on the particular sites that they will offer out for lease. They have promised to talk to other sea users, fishermen included, understand the places that are most important to them. They did this ahead of the recent wind farm leasing round in the Celtic Sea and the process succeeded in identifying and avoiding the places where it would be most harmful to the fishing industry to see turbines installed. The cooperation between the Crown Estate and fishermen was unprecedented and the outcome was a positive one.
Nevertheless, the scale of what is proposed now is an order of magnitude beyond what has gone before. We will soon run out of sea space that can be industrialised without curtailing our capacity to produce food. Those conversations are going to get a lot more difficult as we go forward.
We can’t ignore the real need for discussions like this. Britain faces a fundamental problem: it consumes more energy than it can sustainably produce. Climate change is a reality and lower carbon sources of electricity generation must be found if our way of life is to continue. Many things will have to change to accommodate this and we would be naive if we did not accept that this will include how we use our seas.
The enormity of the threat and the halo with which it crowns any new project or technology that promises to tackle it must not blind us to more mundane motivations, though. Industrialising Britain’s seas is not a charitable project for the greater good of the nation. It is a commercial proposition, to be enacted mostly by foreign-owned multinational corporations, for profit. British consumers will pay for the electricity they receive from the wind farms at prices that have soared in recent years. The Crown Estate itself does not give land away: it leases it out, generating astonishing profits in the process. To be sure, much of the profit made returns to the government, but the Crown Estate is not a department of the civil service and so a substantial sum ends up in private hands too, including those of the King. Last year, the profits from offshore wind leasing were so great that King Charles’s personal share increased by £45 million.
With so much money to be made, there is little wonder that some voices are calling for the process to be faster and for further discussion to be minimised. The whole thing is taking on the air of a gold rush. Vast profits are on the horizon and the big beasts of the international energy industry – many of them the coal, oil and gas giants of yesteryear – are lining up to compete for the biggest share.
The Crown Estate appears to be trying to strike a middle ground: calling for evidence to show where other sea users, including fishermen, are active, but allowing only 8 weeks for submissions to be made. The timetable they have imposed is impossible for the fishing industry to meet, given the complexity of the task of gathering data on fishing effort and location for the thousands of boats active in our waters. We are told that there will be other opportunities to input into their planning and prioritisation processes and there is no reason to doubt this. If we have learned anything from past wind farm leasing rounds, however, it is that their earliest stages are the only points where we can make any meaningful difference to what the outcome looks like. This may not be the only opportunity for fishermen to defend their grounds and their livelihoods, but it may end up being the most important.
Fishing produces affordable, low-carbon food. It makes a significant contribution to the UK’s food security and supports jobs and social cohesion in coastal communities. Money earned from fishing does not pay the shareholders of foreign-owned multinationals. It is spent in local businesses in our coastal towns and helps to keep them afloat. These considerations are often ignored by politicians and corporate decision-makers, but they are vitally important to an awful lot of ordinary people and the social fabric of our nation.
If we reduce fishing opportunities, jobs will be lost and people will suffer as a direct result. If this happens as a result of the scramble for profit; or the desire to adopt short-term solutions; or a rush to meet artificial and politically expedient targets, then we have every right to feel aggrieved. We need a genuine conversation about how best to use the national resource that is our seas in the long-term interests of the people of Britain. If that still results in decisions that will disadvantage fishermen and fishing communities, we may be disappointed, but we cannot dispute the process or the motives involved.
Our new government has an ambitious agenda for economic growth and social renewal. We should be talking to them about the fishing industry’s potential to contribute to this vision and to help spread its benefits to coastal communities. Instead we are talking to the King’s land agents, in a struggle not to lose too much more of what we already have. Again. The ever-growing squeeze on the marine space is the biggest threat to the fishing industry today. If our contribution to the nation is properly valued and our concerns are heeded, then it is still not too late to prevent a self-inflicted disaster.
In the buildup to the recently announced Celtic Sea offshore wind leasing round, we have seen the Crown Estate being far more willing to talk with fishermen than they were in the past. It is increasingly apparent that the best – possibly the only – way to mitigate the impact of offshore power development on our industry is to put the turbines in the places where they will cause the least disruption. It’s essential, therefore, that we are able to have some influence right from the start of the process of site selection.
That is what happened here: the CFPO, WFA-CPC, the NFFO, and many individual fishermen worked with the Crown Estate to define the areas in the Celtic Sea that are most important for fishing. As a result, we have ended up with three sites being offered up for lease to the wind farm developers that avoid all the areas that we were most concerned about. It appears that at least some of the many mistakes made in the east coast leasing rounds will not be repeated here.
This is not to say that there will be no problems going forward. The risks to the security of our food supply remain if the UK continues with this headlong rush to industrialise our seas without a genuinely long-term strategy either for energy generation, or for fishing. It would be unfair not to recognise that there have been some significant steps in the right direction, however, and perhaps this partnership between the Crown Estate and the newly-minted Great British Energy will bring some much needed joined-up thinking to the area. GBE itself remains something of a mystery, though, and it is hard to assess its likely impact without more clarity around its role and its capabilities.
We mustn’t lose sight of some basic facts, though. Offshore wind farm leasing drove the Crown Estate’s profits up almost 150%, to £1.1 billion last year. It is reported that its CEO took home £1.9m in that period (more than three and a half times as much as he was paid 5 years ago) and King Charles received a pay rise of £45m. The profits that the wind farm developers will make from building their power stations on these sites and then selling us the electricity are unknown, but they presumably expect them to be similarly astonishing if they are willing to pay so much for the leases. It is obvious that some people are going to do very nicely out of Britain’s seabed being parcelled out like this. In that context, surely talking to us about what they propose to do in advance and taking some basic steps not to irreparably damage fishing businesses and coastal communities is the very least that we should be able to expect from the Crown Estate and others. That they have not done so until the last couple of years is shameful.
If we are going to continue changing the way that we use our seas like this, then it is long past time that we had a proper conversation about using some of the profits to ensure a just transition for fishermen and fishing communities. The last government seemingly had no interest in holding that conversation: perhaps the new one will.
The MCA have recently sent this infographic which we hope now makes it clear who requires a medical and who doesn’t. . Please distribute this infographic, as necessary.
The language of nature crisis and environmental decline was much used, but so too were references to supporting domestic food production and food security. There was an overriding note of optimism that positive action can solve problems and that the time is right to reset relations between government, producers and environmentalists.
The balancing act between different interests that lies at the heart of Defra was clear to see this evening – both in the Secretary of State’s speech and later in conversation with him and his ministerial team. There is no doubt that they will have to take some difficult decisions very soon. Our job is to ensure that they remember the importance of fishers and fishing communities when they do so. Our industry is certainly being talked about more in government that in often has been – and it is finally being talked about for its important contribution to the nation, not as a conservation problem, or a planning constraint.
As I have said many times before, though: what they do will count for far more than what they say.