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March 15, 2007
Sensible Fishing Rules
It's rare, in this day and age of the absurd, near insane, Common Fisheries Policy, to find something to cheer about with respect to fishing. But this creation of marine reserves where fishing may be banned is at least sensible:
Ben Bradshaw, the environment minister, will announce a network of eight marine reserves, including different types of marine habitat from the sandbanks of the Dogger Bank and off North Norfolk to the Darwin Mounds, an area of deep-water coral 1,000 metres deep off north-west Scotland.
Mr Bradshaw said yesterday that fishing would be banned altogether in some of the reserves - so-called no-take zones - with public consultation being used to determine which.
Creation of a network of marine reserves beyond the 12-mile limit has been forced on the Government by court action from Greenpeace in 1999 and several international treaties.
Jean-Luc Solandt of the Marine Conservation Society said: "I don't think the number of reserves the Government is proposing is big enough to comply with their international obligations. That would need 20-30 per cent of each habitat covered. It is all about the exchange of larvae between areas so species are resilient."
Now we just need to carry on with the rest of the reforms. Knowing what we do about Commons Tragedies it's simply absurd that fishing still operates on hunter gatherer lines.
March 15, 2007 in European Union | Permalink
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Comments
Agreed, the CFP is on outdated and fundamentally flawed policy. Of course it is important to take on board the justified concerns of fishermen in the creation of the Marine Bill, but if the fisheries are not conserved right now, there will be no fishing industry in the UK.
The majority of fish stocks are in a state of collapse, so an ecosystem-led marine management approach seems like a very good idea.
Posted by: ceri | Mar 15, 2007 11:27:25 AM
Why not privatise the sea, then we can get into some real farming with proper investment in sea-bed management. Sell off blocks (within the 200 mile limit) to farmers.
Of course you can't stop fish swimming from to somebody else's farm - YET.
Would land agriculture ever have got off the drawing board if it had been run by beaureaucrats (bloody spelling)?
It's not conservation that we should be concentrating on, it's investment, development and exploitation on a private basis. Technology and knowledge to properly farm and manage the sea are coming up, but governments will never grasp the opportunity.
Posted by: Doug | Mar 15, 2007 10:03:14 PM
