Why the fishermen don't get it
I'm annoyed at fishermen protesting about the recent fish quota cuts, and not getting the point of the cuts, which is to reduce the amount of fish being caught - and therefore also the number of fishermen.
The EC has decided to drastically reduce the allowable fish quotas, notably for North Sea cod. Fishermen are protesting about the cuts, saying things like “People can’t believe this has happened to possibly the hardest working industry in the country,” and bemoaning the lack of jobs that will follow.
Aarrgghh! That’s the point. The fishing industry is, at the moment, over-productive. We’re catching more fish than we should, and the stocks aren’t being replenished fast enough to cope. As soon as we say that we should catch fewer fish in the future, it therefore follows that there will be less work in fishing to go around, and some people will lose their jobs.
That sounds harsh, but some people have their jobs in the fishing industry as a direct result of the over-fishing. These jobs are temporary, nonsustainable, and in the long term shedding a few thousand jobs will be worthwhile if it can safeguard the rest of the industry.
It would be far more interesting to see what skills fishermen have could be turned to other jobs - in the same way that farmers these days get subsidies from the EC to maintain the land without actually farming it.
Now, it’s true that huge supertrawlers like the Atlantic Dawn are mostly responsible for the depletion of fish stocks in recent years; but I don’t think we can realistically turn the clock back on this sort of technical advance. And we can’t, without a great deal of hypocrisy, bemoan the existence of huge technologically-advanced trawlers that take the place of dozens of smaller trawlers, and at the same time in other industries claim that the only way for Europe to compete is to be a knowledge economy and not try to compete against developing countries with far lower labour costs.
Besides, I’m personally far more concerned with fish farms, and all the noxious results of intensive farming - pollution, disease, distortion of the breed like we’ve seen happen to battery hens, and the consequential lack of flavour - than I am with big boats with big nets which are, nonetheless, still catching wild fish. As long as the nets are properly designed so they only catch what they’re supposed to (and not dolphins or under-aged fish), and the trawlers don’t sweep breeding areas, I’m not too fussed.