Anglers have no say on fisheries

I was clearly wrong in my interpretation of what was happening with the 3-12 nautical mile limits. We can’t have been granted ‘sovereignty’ (political autonomy) by the UK if it was conditional. It appears foreign nations tell us what fisheries management regime they want us to follow out to 12 miles and Guernsey’s citizens just get to foot the bill. That’s disappointing…

With regards to Guernsey’s historic failure to invest in any kind of fisheries science, you are quite correct. However, it’s somewhat disingenuous to suggest there’s no scientific information on Guernsey fish stocks when our waters are part of ICES Division VIIe (a longitudinally-oriented slice of the English Channel) and are thoroughly assessed by the International Council for the Exploration of the Seas as part of the process of setting EU quotas. And ICES assessments clearly reflect the levels of historic over-fishing that I mentioned in my previous letter.

That letter was a criticism of our current fisheries management regime (basically an extension of the EU’s Common Fisheries Policy), questioning whether local politicians really understand how that works. It wasn’t a criticism of local commercial fishermen, more a shot at how ridiculous it is to continue to monopolise this public resource.

You can say I’m completely wrong about that as often as you like, but anglers in Guernsey get no allocation of fish quotas that come to us through the UK after they are set by EU fisheries ministers meeting at the Agriculture and Fisheries Council in Brussels each December. We get access, which is essentially worthless because protecting access doesn’t protect fish. To do that you need an allocation of the resource.

Unless you recognise every stakeholder group in fisheries in legislation and create a legal framework whereby each stakeholder group exploiting the resource can clearly prove what the most profitable use is, you are never going to allocate the resource in a way that maximises the economic returns. By giving commercial fishing a monopoly, you essentially prevent free market forces from determining the most profitable exploitation of the resource by society, thereby preventing maximisation of the tax return at the same time.

What’s more, by denying other stakeholders ownership you devalue the resource where they are concerned and that has led, throughout Europe, to a huge black market in illegal fish.

But the locally endemic problem of the illegal sale of black fish is clearly an issue for those governing society and their willingness to uphold the rule of law. Every fish currently sold on Guernsey is illegal if the income from the sale of that fish is not declared (black market fish). Everyone clearly understands that income tax fraud is a criminal offence. Catching that untaxed fish from an unlicensed boat just makes it more illegal than if it was caught from the shore or from a licensed boat.

Why, under the circumstances I’ve described, would anglers want to help commercial fishermen control fishing effort? How could any politician justify charging members of the public for a recreational rod licence, presumably with associated catch limits, when our sport receives no share of any total allowable catch, quota, call it what you will? No true sport angler would be stupid enough to pay for nothing. And no politician throughout Europe has thus far been stupid enough to try and make them.

Angling can’t get its house in order because it doesn’t have one. The vast majority of anglers are affiliated to nothing and no one; we are not a united congregation of any one church. Our ability to exert political pressure is virtually non-existent. Meanwhile, the president of the Guernsey Fishermen’s Association is our current fisheries minister.

And if that wasn’t enough to convince readers of the current inequities in Guernsey fisheries, bear this in mind. When the EU introduced new fisheries regulations pertaining to bass, someone in the public sector couldn’t even manage to copy the wording into local legislation without somehow forgetting to mention shore anglers, only the largest stakeholder group in our island’s fisheries. If they can’t copy and paste in this day and age how likely is it that they can tell us anything reliable about stock levels, especially when they don’t do any actual science?

GREG WHITEHEAD

Address withheld.