FISH FIGHT

THE SOLUTIONs

DiscardWe need to diversify our fish eating habits, and we need to change policy so that it works for fish, fishermen and consumers.

The Common Fisheries Policy (CFP), which is the political framework for the quota system, is currently being reformed for 2012. Scientists and environmental groups have suggested a number of ways that that the policy can work to protect fish stocks. Some details of these can be found on our solutions page.

Re-writing the Common Fisheries Policy is going to be an enormously complicated business, and unfortunately there is no one easy solution to ending discards. Many people agree that the answer will lie in a combination of different ideas and policies.


SOLUTIONS?

So what can be done about discarding?

Re-writing the Common Fisheries Policy is going to be an enormously complicated business, and unfortunately there is no one easy solution to ending discards. Most people agree that the answer will lie in a combination of different ideas and policies.

Experts have offered a number of potential answers. Hugh’s fish fight is not trying to dictate the exact solutions politicians should choose – simply to ensure that whatever their choice for 2012, the prevention of discarding should be a top priority.

If you are interested in finding out about the ways discarding can be stopped, here are the ideas of environmental Non Government Organisations (NGOs) who are supporting us: Client Earth, the Marine Conversation Society, the WWF, The Angling Trust, Ocean2012 and Greenpeace.

So none would be the answer.

all this will achieve (if anything) is to pressure politicians into making a quick and poorly thought out decision to win some votes.
 
lol pretty much the next vote winner right here... media frenzy.. battery hens anyone, what will be next??
 
The only way that they can put an end to the discarding of vast quantities of fish, is to introduce derby style fisheries, the problem with those is that the safety of the trawlermen themselves is then put at even greater risk as they race to catch as much as they possibly can.

Beyond that, they would need to look into switching the entire european fishing fleet, away from net fishing, to longline or pot, and even then it wouldn't be an ideal solution, and would cost billions to the industry to ensure that the existing fleet were replaced/modified.
 
If you drop student politics for long enough to think about consequences... you'll realise that throwing the fish back in is a good thing.

The only way to encourage fishermen not to catch certain fish is to ensure they get no financial gain by doing so. They will not catch these fish on purpose just to throw them back in. And you can't prevent them catching them by accident since you've no way of knowing what they caught while they were out there.

Perhaps the fishing policy can be improved on if it's done carefully.

But anything invovled with Greenpeace fascists is just student politics nonsense and should be instantly discarded.
 
If you actually knew anything about the discard of fish caught that are outside their quota, you'd know that they are 99% dead.. and do nothing more than 'feed the crabs'.

I'm not arguing from the point of a greenpeace eco-friendly hippy type, I'm looking at it from the point of view of someone that grew up in a fishing town, where almost everyone was involved in the fishing industry in one way or another. I've worked on the boats myself, and I know how goddamn hard it is.

There is NO way to 'encourage fishermen to not catch certain fish', what are they meant to do.. put a bloody sign on their nets saying "sorry cod, we don't want you today?". You throw a bloomin great net over the side, you let it soak, you pull it back in and see what you have.. about 60% of this, is, according to the scientists "endangered" species, that you cannot legally land, and so, must be thrown over the side.
 
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If you drop student politics for long enough to think about consequences... you'll realise that throwing the fish back in is a good thing.

The only way to encourage fishermen not to catch certain fish is to ensure they get no financial gain by doing so. They will not catch these fish on purpose just to throw them back in. And you can't prevent them catching them by accident since you've no way of knowing what they caught while they were out there.

Perhaps the fishing policy can be improved on if it's done carefully.

But anything invovled with Greenpeace fascists is just student politics nonsense and should be instantly discarded.

It's hard enough catching just one specific species with a rod and line, using a net it's practically impossible. It's better to use what's caught than to throw it away.

What? Of course they're dead. Why does that matter?

That's the point, why waste it?
 
The crews of the trawlers, work hard shifts, at great risk, to catch what they can, EU rules say that they can only catch certain amounts of certain fish, the rest is not allowed. With current net fishing techniques, it is not possible to discriminate by species, and thus the crews are working for nothing. To then have to throw perfectly good fish away, is just rubbing salt in the wound, and does nothing for the economy of the fishing industry, and does nothing for the ecology of the sea.
 
It's hard enough catching just one specific species with a rod and line, using a net it's practically impossible. It's better to use what's caught than to throw it away.



That's the point, why waste it?

If you can't work it out then read my post again and again until you can.
 
The crews of the trawlers, work hard shifts, at great risk, to catch what they can, EU rules say that they can only catch certain amounts of certain fish, the rest is not allowed. With current net fishing techniques, it is not possible to discriminate by species, and thus the crews are working for nothing. To then have to throw perfectly good fish away, is just rubbing salt in the wound, and does nothing for the economy of the fishing industry, and does nothing for the ecology of the sea.

You're trolling, right? The fishermen go to certain places and use certain methods to catch certain fish. The whole point of forcing them to throw back fish when they fail to get it right is to stop them getting it wrong so that they are encouraged to get it right.

If you let them whoops I accidentally as much as they want then they'll fish the easiest stuff to fish and ignore the quotas.

Why is that hard to grasp?
 
What? Of course they're dead. Why does that matter?

Because the quotas were brought in to protect fish species which were in decline. One of the things the fishermen brought up during the shows was that they're starting to catch more and more cod now that the stocks have started to recover, but once they land their quota then they have to throw any more cod back into the water. So they're dumping thousands of fish back into the sea dead because this allows the stock to recover. Somehow.

The other thing that's been brought up is the dodgy labeling on tins of fish some supermarkets have claiming that they are dolphin friendly. A couple of girls on the show last night went to one of the ships which caught tuna for one of these supermarkets and the crewman giving them a tour openly admitted that their methods caught sharks, turtles and fish in the process too. The company claimed that if this happens the creatures are released back into the sea unharmed, but they had some footage of a ship trying to release a ray and they weren't exactly gentle.

You're trolling, right? The fishermen go to certain places and use certain methods to catch certain fish.

Except that generally they don't. They use industrial-sized purse seining, which catches everything from the small fish which attract the tuna up to dolphins and turtles.
 
Because the quotas were brought in to protect fish species which were in decline. One of the things the fishermen brought up during the shows was that they're starting to catch more and more cod now that the stocks have started to recover, but once they land their quota then they have to throw any more cod back into the water. So they're dumping thousands of fish back into the sea dead because this allows the stock to recover. Somehow.

The other thing that's been brought up is the dodgy labeling on tins of fish some supermarkets have claiming that they are dolphin friendly. A couple of girls on the show last night went to one of the ships which caught tuna for one of these supermarkets and the crewman giving them a tour openly admitted that their methods caught sharks, turtles and fish in the process too. The company claimed that if this happens the creatures are released back into the sea unharmed, but they had some footage of a ship trying to release a ray and they weren't exactly gentle.



Except that generally they don't. They use industrial-sized purse seining, which catches everything from the small fish which attract the tuna up to dolphins and turtles.

They protect fish stocks because fisherman are encouraged not to fish those fish because it's extra hassle for no financial reward.

It's not an ideal system - what do you propose?

As for dolphin friendly I'm no expert but even I knew it wasn't dolphin super friendly, and it just meant better than nothing. Any tuna I've bought recently has a print on the top of the tin saying caught by rod and line. I'm quite sure there's some conning goes on there too though.
 
You're trolling, right? The fishermen go to certain places and use certain methods to catch certain fish. The whole point of forcing them to throw back fish when they fail to get it right is to stop them getting it wrong so that they are encouraged to get it right.

If you let them whoops I accidentally as much as they want then they'll fish the easiest stuff to fish and ignore the quotas.

Why is that hard to grasp?

It's nothing to do with trolling at all, and I have not once said that I advocated allowing the fishing fleets to catch as much as they want. What I said was that with present fishing methods, quotas are completely impractical, as net fishing is indescriminant. I suggest that you hop onto 4OD and watch episode 1 of Hugh's Fish Fight, and see what it is really like, as opposed to harping on about things that you blatantly haven't got a clue about.
 
You've said it's a waste for them to throw the fish back in. What do you want them to do with the fish?

Keep them but not get paid? = They'll just throw them back in.
Pay a penalty? - They'll just throw them back in.
Get paid for them? - They'll just keep overfishing those fish.

The only two workable alternatives are reduced rates for the fish they're not supposed to catch, which can be used to subsidise the fish that should be caught. You'd be surprised just how inventive people can be when you put an incentive there.

Or you could limit the time they are allowed to fish, and tell them to catch what they want. That's bad for other reasons.

You could try to limit where they go to avoid areas where young fish are, which for some species might be possible. But how do you really police that?

But this thread is from the Greenpeace funded anti-capitalist student politics anti-business "Stop fishing" campaign disguised as something else, which since it has no alternative proposed is just foot stamping from environmental fascists.

My only point about throwing the fish back is that it ensures the fisherman are not financially rewarded for catching the wrong fish. That's what people can't seem to grasp.
 
They protect fish stocks because fisherman are encouraged not to fish those fish because it's extra hassle for no financial reward.

Except that like you said yourself a couple of posts ago:

you can't prevent them catching them by accident since you've no way of knowing what they caught while they were out there

So either they have to completely retool for a different, more specific method of fishing like pole or they need to do something else. At the end of the day, removing the financial incentive makes no sense if the fishermen aren't fishing more specifically and it does nothing to help the fish stocks, which was the entire point of the system.

One of the fishermen suggested that instead of annual quotas for dozens of different species they should get a small period of time during the year where they are allowed to land whatever they like, and the rest of the year fishing is illegal. That might work OK for smaller vessels but there'd have to be overall limits to stop people harvesting 99.99% of the fish in a day. Something like annual monitoring of stocks and setting the quotas based on the latest figures could make sense, but that depends on the policy makers following the data, which they haven't been doing.

As for dolphin friendly I'm no expert but even I knew it wasn't dolphin super friendly, and it just meant better than nothing.

Maybe true, but you can't call it dolphin safe if it isn't. That's blatantly misleading customers, and I'm sure they do it, but that doesn't mean it should just be accepted.
 
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