A radical report by the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution which recommended that commercial fishing should be banned in 30% of UK waters received strong backing from Britain’s recreational sea anglers.
The Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution said the capacity of the UK fishing fleet should be cut “to an environmentally sustainable level.” The report – Turning The Tide, Addressing The Impact Of Fisheries On the Marine Environment – says the sea should be treated in the same way as endangered land habitats. It said: “Currently, the marine environment is regulated on the basis of a presumption in favour of fishing…we recommend that the presumption should be reversed.”
It recommended establishing a network of marine protected areas within five years, with the closure to commercial fishing of 30% of the country’s exclusive economic zone – an area which goes out to 200 nautical miles from the shore around Britain. These protected areas could benefit the entire marine ecosystem, from spawning fish to deep-living organisms and the seabed itself, the RCEP said. Similar reserves established on Georges Bank, off the north-east coast of North America, have seen species recoveries, with the density of scallops increasing up to 14-fold within five years.
RCEP Chairman Sir Tom Blundell said:-
“We have almost all of the industrially fished populations down to between 15 and 20% throughout the world. This is a catastrophe.”
The report urged the government to review the funding available to promote economic diversification in areas dependent on fishing.
Recreational Sea Angling was represented at today’s launch of the ‘landmark’ report by the National Co-ordinator of the Sea Anglers’ Conservation Network (SACN), Leon Roskilly.
Leon welcomed the conclusions of the report saying:-
“We were pleased to see reference made to the fact that the economic scale of sea angling is similar to that of commercial fishing.
At the launch Leon made the point that the establishment of wholly recreational fisheries in environmentally sensitive areas, such as that currently proposed for the combined Stour & Orwell estuaries on the Essex and Suffolk border, whilst at the same time banning more destructive forms of fishing, ensure that a valuable socio-economic return can still be obtained for the wider community from the directed Best Value Management of the resource whilst achieving a significant and worthwhile environmental objective. He also noted how well many of the recommendations made in the RCEP report enmesh with the proposals set out in the Bass Management Plan, recently published by the Bass Anglers’ Sportfishing Society.
Martin Salter MP, Parliamentary Spokesman for Angling said:-
“The establishment of marine conservation zones in UK coastal waters is long overdue. The ongoing over-fishing of the sea is little short of an environmental disaster. Unless radical action is taken soon there will be next to no fish left for either the commercial fleet or for recreational anglers. It is important that anglers and environmentalists combine forces to argue for the implementation of this report’s recommendations even though it will inevitably lead to job losses amongst commercial fishing communities. However, some of these could be mitigated by the smaller boats switching to recreational angling which can deliver huge economic advantage to communities based near productive sea fisheries.”
