A future for cod?
Peterhead, Aberdeenshire
Dawn arrives slowly over the harbour, the luminous blue of the new day mingling with the inky black of night, brightened by a few pink-tinged clouds. There are points of light from a handful of trawlers that have returned from the the North Sea. Just around the corner long refrigeration lorries are beginning to arrive and back up next to the auction house, ready to receive the day's catch, glistening in lines of blue boxes. 
But could today see a new dawn for the Scottish fishing industry, or another gloomy outlook?
Fisheries ministers in Brussels have agreed a 25% cut on "the mortality rate" (the cut will happen next year, based on this year's figures). Although this sounds devastating, it is being sold as "catch less, land more" by both the industry and the UK and Scottish governments.
The main idea is to allow cod to breed again, but the tweak in the wording to "reducing mortality" is aimed at getting rid or the ludicrous practice of fishermen catching fish and then throwing them back dead. The cod, being dead, can't breed but neither can the fishermen make any money out of them.
Some Scottish fishermen are embracing the new ideas with enthusiasm.
On board the Fairline, John Buchan, his son-in-law and his grandson are hard at work putting a brand new net onto their trawler's haulage system. The three generations are investing not only a lot of money - £9,000 - but a lot of hope in this new net. The idea, which you might think a novel one for a net, is to allow some fish to escape.
Whereas most such nets have meshing of eight inches (20.3cm), this has 48 inches, which looks ludicrous, a net fit only to catch large sharks, you might think. But John explains to me it doesn't quite work that way. The huge holes are near the beginning of the long trawling net, shaped like an elongated sock, and the cod dive down to escape. Other fish tend to stay where they are and are herded back into the end of the net, where the mesh is the normal eight inches.
John and his family are pioneers and believe this radical departure will help them stay in business.
In the fish auction room the price of cod and haddock and whiting are shouted loudly and the auctioneers move quickly from one line of blue boxes to the next. They say the price is OK at the moment. The people I speak to are fiercely protective of what's left of their shrunken industry. No one wants to talk on camera, but on a "no names" basis they are scathing.
..... is absolutely right to chide me for reflecting a bureaucratic view, rather than that on the ground. People here say there's plenty of cod in the North Sea and the scientists' reports are way behind what is really happening. Many of them feel passionately about saving what is left of their industry and I get the impression they think the nets and so on are yet another fad from the politicians, but they'll go along with it just in case it helps.
The industry and the politicians are promoting the new ideas under the rubric "catch less, land more". But we won't know if this will be true in practice for another couple of weeks. The landing - and so selling - of cod has to wait for another meeting, another negotiation, which will set the quotas for catching and selling cod. If the British politicians don't get the increase they want it could be a case of "catch less, sell less, earn less".
I’m Mark Mardell, the BBC's North America editor. These are my reflections on American politics, some thoughts on being a Brit living in the USA, and who knows what else? My 
© MMIX~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~54~RS~)
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So, we have the Scottish/Norway solution after all - previous blog? As for the "plenty of cod" comments, see responses to that Blog also. Mark, who takes your photos? The fish in your picture labelled A look more like mackerel to me.
I hope all goes well for John Buchan, even if he won't be catching what I would call "real" cod (when did you last buy cod steaks so big that just one would fill your plate?).
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I'm not surprised you didn't see cod in the Peterhead chippie. It would be a rare sight anywhere in Scotland.
The Scots fish of choice is haddock.
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i think haddock is the picture with "blue hands" ?
isn't it herring here at A? or it is not caught by Britain anylonger?
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Without being patronising, fishermen are not the people to get reliable figures on fish stocks from.
The problem, which has only been understood relatively recently, is to do with fish distribution. Fish congregate in the best feeding grounds until these grounds are saturated; remaining fish are then displaced to less favoured feeding grounds.
Thus as fish are caught in the best feeding grounds they are replaced by fish from the less favoured areas. Eventually the sea can be empty of fish apart from the last few shoals in the best feeding grounds.
With modern fish location devices it is possible to find these shoals and catch them. To the fisherman it will appear as though there are plenty of fish right to the end as the survivors are concentrated and easy to catch.
This is essentially what happened to Canada's once famous Grand Banks cod fishery. "Common sense" and fishermen's observations suggested that there would be plenty of warning before stocks collapsed, as it was thought it would be obvious that fish numbers were declining. Unfortunately they didn't understand how things worked, and now the world's biggest cod fishery is nothing but a memory.
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The problem is there are too many fishermen and their hunt is not sustainable. Somehow they manage to have a powerful lobby. Reminds me of the CAP and how difficult it is to change. Oh, how our politicians must be jealous of the Chinese government.
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No cod in the Peterhead fish and chip shop shock horror. Indeed, the item on the TV news last night made me laugh. It is like going into Chez Leon to find no roast chicken on display and saying it proves that poultry is extinct in Belgium.
But the situation is no joke and I know fishermen who will be forthright that the problem is long-term gross over-fishing - no excuses. The Danes vacuum-cleaner approach over decades (catch everything in the sea, whatever size or species, and reduce it to fish-meal to feed pigs!) must have done terrible damage. The Spanish and French wiped out their own fish and have been allowed by the UK/EU to devastate Scottish waters also. The Spaniards' illegal and unchecked habit of catching and eating baby fish is a particular factor. The financial pressure on the fishermen can be horrendous. But the Scottish fishermen must take their share of responsibility also. Clearly from the report some of them are doing so. The contributor who observes that fisherment may not be best placed to judge has a point - it is like the false assumption that farmers must be good managers of the environment. Some are, many have not been.
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Dear Mark,
Fishing ? WHAT and unmittigating disaster. both Fisheries wise and scientific, wise, EVEN WORSE POLITICALLY.
Fishermen have wrecked the Planet, regards over Fishing, THEY CONTINUE TO DO SO, and they never learn they just keep on wrecking it, there is NO respect for Conservation
Scientists and Officials do more damage than the fishermen with their ludicrous regulations, and the discrimination regards Countries decommissioning their Fleets is purposely selective and Britain has taken the blunt of enforced controls putting thousands out of work.The European Fishing Policy is absolute ----?
Along with Whaling there is asolutely no respect for the Oceans except by those who want to protect it. Politicians are the worse enemy of our Oceans, along with commercial fishermen, and scientists who have got it all wrong.
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"...the ludicrous practice of fishermen catching fish and then throwing them back dead." But nothing to indicate that it is CFP policy (from the self-same bureaucrats who are now pushing for this mortality reduction) of quotas for specific fish that is the reason for this wasteful practice. As politicians are involved things can only get worse.
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Sorry to disappoint youngCaptain Fatty but it wasn't the "bureaucrats" who thrashed out, then signed this deal: it was the Fisheries Ministers from the EU nation states. ie the elected governments. NB I agree, though, that "things can only get worse" when politicians get involved.
I was also just wondering how it is that many of the contributors to this blog claim to be in favour of free-trade - except when it comes to EU fishermen fishing (ie first step in their trade process) in each others' waters.
The real problem is that the EU politicians draw back too far from prescribing the necessary nasty medicine for fisheries.
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Who wants a joke MEP Kilroy in the jungle.Just show what he thinks o fhte EU Parliement a sick joke.Vote kilroy and ukip and june elections
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After cod - tuna. Fishermen in the med. have been scraping the barrel, and there is talk of a total ban on bluefin tuna fishing. This is not unexpected. Scientists wanted half of the finally agreed quota of 16,779.5 tons taken, fishermen illegally took 61,000 tons. Most of that was fished by europeans and then sold/taken (including transferring fish while still at sea) to Japan.
It is not JUST cod, or Tuna , but overfishing of every sort and all over the world.
I agree with frenchderick that the EU politicians just do not prescribe the necessary medicine. They are far too owned by the "free" marketeers, to see that there is always a price. You can also see this emphasis on economic benefit solely for the few, in the new agricultural policy, where French farmers have already demonstrated because they cannot cover cost of production.
Monetary greed, aided by idiots in power, probably means starvation will come before salvation.
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We need a total stop on foreign fishermen fishing in British waters. To achieve that we need to leave the "EU". And to achieve that we need to vote UKIP until there is something better. UKIP isn't perfect but Labour, LibDems and Conservatives are worse than useless.
The fishing business is only one example of our need to free ourselves from the "EU".
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An interesting blog with some interesting comments. Thanks Mark and everyone else.
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
The problem around Britain started long before she joined the now EU. The easy part is making rules. Policing them is well nigh impossible.
Spanish owners have bought quota rights of British owners who put them up for sale. These boats have as good a right to catch their quota as any British owned vessel.
It is possible to find underside fish in Spanish fish markets that has been supplied from the Far East, China in particular. The problem is that the size of the fish on average is much smaller than marked on the boxes.
I am sure that the Spanish fishermen are no more or less honest than any others but blaming them has the advantage that the Spanish do not care what others think of them even if they knew. The disadvantage is if others are responsible you do not have to do anything about solving the proble.
BTW I come from a long line of Cornish fisherman and farmers on my fathers side. They made far more from smuggling and other doubtful activities connected with the sea than they ever did from fishing herring
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Re: #9
I'm new to this blog, so don't know what other people have said (and couldn't speak for them even if I did).
My own view is that free trade is generally a good thing, if by free trade you mean that people can freely exchange their goods/property/produce with whoever they wish, at a price freely agreed by the two parties. So for example, once fish has have been caught, the fishermen should be able to sell them to whoever they want, at whatever price they can get.
However, I don't think this can/should apply to the initial catching of the fish.
For one thing, they are not "producing" the fish, they are taking them from a common supply, which is a) limited, and b) effectively belongs to everybody/nobody.
And when something belongs to everybody/nobody, responsibility for looking after it lies with everybody/nobody (and in practice, the latter).
Furthermore, the effect of any individual on the common supply (whether by being responsible or irresponsible) is small, which tends to encourage everyone to behave irresponsibly, with catastrophic results as we can see. (And if one fishing crew does decide to behave responsibly, it won't make any difference to the total fish stocks, and just make them poorer than their irresponsible rivals).
Returning control of fishing grounds would not eliminate this problem, but I think it would reduce it, because fishermen would be less able to move on to new fishing grounds if they exhausted their current ones, thereby making it more worthwhile for them (and their governments) to fish sustainable.
Of course, it is entirely possible that, given control over British fisheries, the British government could choose a fisheries policy equally bad as what we have at the moment, but at least we wouldn't drag down everyone else with us. And if one nation managed their fisheries in a manner that was better (or worse) than others, then they would act as example (or warning) for the others.
And you would avoid the problem we have at the moment, where not only is a stunningly bad policy is imposed on everyone, but even though everyone knows it is stunningly bad, it can't be changed until everyone agrees on what it should be changed to. (There may not even be a single best solution, as different policies might be appropriate for different countries).
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Mark, which fish are you talking about? is it the big fat EU fishes? or just the usual ones who feed on them?
anyway, what happened to the bees? that's the question..
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by *bees* i mean the working people
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You can find this in textbooks on game theory -- it is a very simple system. A bit like the prisoners' dilemma with a large number of prisoners. If you assume a fisherman is thinking only of his own profits (a fairly good approximation) then the rational thing for him to do is to catch as many fish as possible, small and large of any species which swims into his net, because his own fishing activities have only a negligible effect on the total population and on the price he gets at market.
Every fisherman acts in this way (i.e. rationally), the population collapses and everybody goes bankrupt, e.g. cod fisheries on the east coast of Canada as mentioned above.
In principle the solution is easy: save fishermen from their own selfish rationality through regulation of the market, quotas, etc. on as global a scale as possible, so the main goal must be to get the EU system working properly (and in the future to implement something at the UN level), rather than leave it to national governments. Unfortunately the EU system is hobbled by the fact that it is controlled essentially by national governments who want the best only for their own fishermen; this in turn is rational because they are chasing votes in only their own country.
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Are the little-Englanders, e.g. #12, not aware that fish are equipped with fins and can swim across borders?
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Mark:
There is a future for cod!
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20. At 00:03am on 22 Nov 2008, jon_toronto wrote:
"Are the little-Englanders, e.g. #12, not aware that fish are equipped with fins and can swim across borders?"
I am not a little-Englander. I am aware that fish have fins and can swim, thank you.
My main concern is not to be in the "EU".
I am thinking of trying to move to Toronto.
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Evidently not. And.. are you out of your goddamn mind? Errrrr yes.. Oh no I'm so sorry I didn't realise, of course the fish will also vote UKIP. So no problem. Silly me!
The EU will be damned if it does and be damned if it doesn't. Such is life!
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#12 is verry sillllly and i hereby declare independence from hereford & worcestershire. Ne'ver mind how offensive.
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How are the poor English to cope when the EVIL SPANISH take ALL OUR FISH via some kind of arrangements DESIGNED TO KILL US ENGLISH PEOPLE?? It really would seem that we are at a lost end. Why is it that we forgiving and rather friendly English people are content to watch these people eat our babies?!? My God if if weren't for the Daily Mail, I would probably have already have eaten my babies.
What to do? We have ALREADY TRIED HATING EVERYBODY, but that doesn't seem to work. Oh dear. Must I now hate Rupert Murdoch??? Or can I content myself with the master of Massey?
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23. At 10:18am on 22 Nov 2008, jon_toronto wrote:
"Evidently not. And.. are you out of your goddamn mind? Errrrr yes.. Oh no I'm so sorry I didn't realise, of course the fish will also vote UKIP. So no problem. Silly me!"
I refer to the above and to Nos. 24, 25
SB2:
So I am out of my mind because I disagree with you! Calling people mad is a technique which is frequently used by "EU"-lovers. I find this deeply worrying.
As I and others see it, the "EU" looks more and more like the old Soviet Union. Under Breshniev people who disagreed were locked up in mental hospitals. This was an improvement on Stalin. Since the "EU" appears to be going backwards, I consider it possible that it will eventually enter a Stalinist phase. Hopefully I will have escaped to Canada by then.
Ascribing views to me or other "EU"-phobes so that they can argue against them is another old "EU"-lovers manipulative ploy.
"We have ALREADY TRIED HATING EVERYBODY..." I haven't. I do not hate everybody. I do not hate any country, race or ethnic group. I get on very well with the charming, efficient, helpful, decent and competent Slovaks and Hungarians that I meet in my present employment. I have had BNP voters have a go at me because I get on well with people of Asian ethnicity. In my previous employment I met people from Portugal and Nigeria and got on well with them too.
"...the fish will also vote UKIP. " And you call me mad!
I was going to write to you that I might have been a bit quick in denying being a little Englander for the simple reason that I do not know what a little Englander is. I think I know roughly what it is. I think it means xenophobic and isolationist. (Two more "EU"-lovers favourites.) I deny being xenophobic or isolationist.
If you can calm down, then maybe you could inform me what exactly you mean by little Englander.
Maybe some other "EU"-lover could inform me what exactly they mean by "little Englander."
Moderator: Please could you not remove posts No.s 23,24 and 25 if you have any requests to do so as, in my unhumble opinion, they are important evidence about the goings on in the minds of at least a lot of "EU"-lovers.
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To cheer you up, Russian fishermen are also greedy. The have quotas but don't care for them.
But your English fishermen at least bring you fish home! Ours do much worse. As with USSR collapse all systems collapsed, incl. who builds refrigerator trains to carry fish 11 thousand kilometres across Russia, that is the state doesn't provide fishermen with trains anymore, and themselves they can't cover the cost.
And they don't have the money to builf fosh-processing factories to meet their fish on the shore either. Nowhere to pack it, tin, freeze or label or whatever. No shore bases.
So our fishermen simply catch their quotas and then go to China and Japan, and unoad fish there. China and Japan always welcome them. They've got all on the shore ready to meet fish boats.
In 50% of the cases Japanese and Chinese fish factories simply meet Russian ship-boats half-way, in the sea, and un-loading takes place in the sea.
As simple as that.
Then we buy our own Russian fish at exorbitant prices arriving to us from hell knows where by airplanes as foreign imports.
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On this site I read that the Sweden has ratified the Lisbon treaty.
They should not have done that knowing that the people of the UK have been denied the referendum we were promised.
They should not have ratified it for moral reasons. The "EU" is supposed to be about democracy. It likes to lecture other countries on democracy e.g. Cuba. They should have insisted that we in the UK get that which is rightfully ours.
They should not have done it for practical reasons. They ought the realise that this can only lead to trouble. At the very least it will lead to constant friction between the unwilling population of the UK and continental "EU"-lovers. It might just lead to a violent uprising with more war graves in Europe. I do not want that and I am not threatening violence.
I also read :"Governments in countries that have ratified the treaty insist it cannot be changed..."
Cannot be changed? Well in that case it must be abandoned.
"Cannot be changed" is just more "EU"-lovers manipulative bullproduct.
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To top it all in the Pacific China and Japan are constantly fishing in our waters. Because you can't attach a navy vessel to shoot off Chinese and Japanese to every point in the sea. There are 3 borderline patrol vessels in the Pacific Russian coast who each catch 3-4 pirates a day, but what can you do with them. Take nets, arrest crews - it'll be a dimplomatic scandal times 6 every day. And in fact there is, every time we arrest crews and boats in our waters.
But own shores Japan and China swept clean long time ago. Fish is leaning onto Russian shores as a safer survival place because our own fish boats are a little now (though very greedy) but anyway all small and old and can be counted on two hands in quantity. No more large fish factories floating like in the USSR. So to get any fish China and Jap simply have to violate our borders on a daily basis.
What to do if we are such idiots ourselves and don't catch it in the Pacific.
Norway salmon - ugh. They are all artificially bred, fed with hell knows what.
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Austrian newspaper "Wiener Kuriker" reports that a dentist in Cosenza, Italy, financed the purchase of a luxury car with EU-money. The price of a yellow Ferrari-Testarossa: 200,000 Euro. He kept this car with 55 other luxury cars in a warehouse. The dentist got the money for the production of solar -"collectors". The solar-"collectors" never saw the light of day.
A Belgian "EU"-official claimed to be helping victims of Chernobyl, but he only helped himself.
The "EU" paid 100,000 Euro to assist in the "internationalisation of Finnish Tango."
On the Danish Island of Bornholm the "EU" funded the construction of a skipiste to the tune of 100,000 Euros. Last winter it was open for one day.
Read the article in German and you will realise that it is not true that German speaking people do not have a sense of humour.
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Sorry to disappoint frenchderek (9) but the EU is entirely to blame for this.
Nowhere can it be seen clearer that the EU is thoroughly undemocratic then here. EU ministers go to Brussels and together with their EU politburo (commission) friends they make legislation and decisions which are not subject to any democratic/parliamentary scrutiny. Only through the antidemocratic EU could they have done this. Because as I said many times before, legislation and decisions made jointly by the EU politburo and the EU council is not subject to meaningful democratic/parliamentary scrutiny (queue EU loving crickets chirping, as they ignore this fact about the EU being fully antidemocratic and destroying parliamentary democracy as we once knew it).
And on a different note. It is quite unbelieveable how some people seem to think the EU is a free trade zone. It is nothing of the kind! The EU is a customs union which doesn't hesitate to destroy the livelyhood of African farmers and fishermen to protect its own inefficient policies.
Finally, it is very frustrating to see the EU destroying livelyhoods in so many policy areas, and screwing everything up for most people with their ridiculous 'enabling act-esque' one-size-fits-all solutions to every 'problem' and yet the media (such as the BBC) utterly fail to attach the blame where it belongs: with the antidemocratic EU. The BBC of course takes money from the EU which ought to be considered bribes. No doubt that it is official policy with the BBC 'never question the EU' because the BBC apparently doesn't like parliamentary democracy but it does like the EU politburo legislating without a mandate or without democratic scrutiny.
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And as most people realize, almost everyone would be better off without the EU, except the politicians. Which is why it keeps existing.
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It is not merely wrong that the "EU" paid 100,000 Euros to assist in the internationalisation of Finnish Tango.
It is wrong that a mechanism exists which could enable them to do it.
See #30
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Justin: "The cod, being dead, can't breed..."
That's a great sentence.
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The main problem of the fishing industry are to many fisherman and not so much to go around. That means that there need to be fewer predators read "fishermen" to alow the prey to recover. Subsidising the fishing industry in this effort is therfore counterproductive, the more you support the industry, the prey gets weaker and total collapse becomes a risk.
If we want stronger fishing stocks many things have to change, use of fishing gear (is no magic solution, fish like haddock with weak immune system dies after loosing few scales) seasonal stop during spawning season, smaller pellagic fishing (stopping cappelin fishing in the barent sea has helped the cod recover).
But as one british politican stated correctly "fishing is economic peanuts but political dinamite". In my opinon to safe the industry we need to create imbeded interests in the fishing industry, and the means to abolish the common fishing policy, its has not worked for anyone in this industry so scrap it.
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