Fisheries our most precious natural resource

Back in July last year, the UK surrendered sovereignty of the 12 nautical mile limit to the Bailiwick, making Guernsey solely responsible for our own fisheries. In short, that means we as a society can, for the first time in a generation, decide what fisheries management regime we put in place and who can fish in our waters. The UK government should no longer be negotiating international treaties on our behalf unless we allow them to, which clearly we shouldn’t.

Our marine biodiversity is probably our most precious natural resource. Historically it has been over-fished to the point where spawning stocks of traditionally popular ‘table’ fish have been reduced to less than 25% of natural, pre-industrial levels. The EU’s Common Fisheries Policy has been the cause. Essentially, politicians throughout Europe have always set quotas way above the scientifically recommended maximum sustainable yields, allowing the commercial fishing sector to fish unsustainably for the last five decades.

I strongly suspect that what most of our politicians know about responsible fisheries management you could write on the back of a postage stamp. In fact, I don’t think anyone in the public sector understands responsible fisheries management and how our island desperately needs to apply it.

For a start, they seem to have lost sight of the fact that fish stocks are a ‘public’ resource that belongs to society as a whole. At the moment around 0.3% of the population (the commercial licence holders) are granted the privilege of harvesting 100% of the quota for personal gain. Why?

Can anyone in the public sector tell us the value of recreational sport fishing to Guernsey’s economy or what tonnage of fish anglers harvest each year? Why not? Because they haven’t got a clue, that’s why.

There are probably over 2,000 anglers on this island. There are just over 200 commercial fishing licence holders. Commercials get everything, anglers get nothing. If Gavin St Pier wants to talk about ‘proportionality’ and fairness, maybe he should learn the relative values of the recreational and commercial sectors to the local economy and share out the quota more equitably along those lines...

What I would say to our island’s army of anglers is, now is the time. If you want to safeguard your sea angling opportunities for future generations, then you need to make yourselves heard now. In forthcoming local elections I would strongly advise all anglers not to vote for any political candidate that is willing to do deals with foreign nations that allow foreign commercial fishermen to harvest fish inside Guernsey’s 12-mile limit. If we allow that to happen then Guernsey will remain tied to Europe’s disastrously destructive fisheries management regime and our sport will continue to die a slow, miserable death. Instead, we need to pressure local politicians into recognising the value of angling and managing this public resource responsibly for the whole of our society, not just in the interests of the 0.3%...

GREG WHITEHEAD

Press angling correspondent.