Uncontrolled catching of fish for industrial use is depleting stocks of species eaten by humans and causing the starvation of sea birds and other animals, according to an unusual alliance of fishermen and wildlife conservationists. Such fishing must be curbed, they say, until more is known about its effect on the marine ecosystem.
Greenpeace wants the government to use its presidency of the European Community to press for a ban on industrial fishing in the North Sea. "There is little public awareness that as much as 50 per cent by weight of all fish taken from the North Sea is not for human consumption," Mary Munson of Greenpeace said. The group's report, "European Fisheries in Crisis", is published today.
Concern about the scale of industrial fishing is shared by the National Federation of Fishermen's Organisations and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. They say a blanket ban is politically unrealistic and favour a reduction in industrial catches and local no-go zones for such fishing. Henry McCubbin, Labour Euro-MP for North East Scotland, said he strongly supported tighter controls on industrial fishing. "In 1989 British vessels landed 751,000 tonnes of fish while Denmark, which is a tenth the size of Britain, landed 1.9 million tonnes, of which 1.5 million were for industrial purposes."
John Gummer, the fisheries minister, though sympathetic to the case against industrial fishing, has been reluctant to press the Danes too hard. Denmark was allocated a small share of edible fish quotas when the common fisheries policy was set up, and Britain might have to give up some of its fish quota to the Danes if industrial fishing were cut back.
Denmark is the biggest harvester of industrial fish. The main species caught are sand eel, Norway pout and horse mackerel. Mashed to a pulp in factories, they can be turned into fish meal, used in animal feed and fertiliser, and oil, used in making margarine, cosmetics, paint, candles and polish.
Industrial species are a basic food for cod, haddock and other fish eaten by humans. The North Sea spawning stock of mature cod has fallen by more than half over the past decade and that of haddock by more than two-thirds.
Sandeels are also an important part of the diet of sea birds and marine mammals such as dolphins and porpoises. A drastic fall in the numbers of sand-eels possibly due to overfishing is blamed for the deaths of thousands of young seabirds several years ago in the Shetland Islands, among them Arctic terns, Arctic skuas, kittiwakes, puffins, great skuas and red-throated divers.
Industrial fishermen use nets with very fine mesh that unavoidably scoop up large "by-catches" of juvenile edible fish as well. The EC sets limits on the total amount of edible fish that can be caught, but in the case of industrial species such limits are either non-existent or set so high as to be purely academic. "At the very least, sensible catch limits should be set and industrial fishing banned in the most sensitive areas, such as the Dogger Bank and off the Shetland Islands," Richard Banks, the NFFO's chief executive, said.
Mr McCubbin admits that a ban on industrial fishing could create difficulties in Scotland. A small number of Scottish vessels fish for sand-eel and salmon farms depend on fish meal for feed. "Fish farming now employs 6,200 in Scotland, more than coal mining or the steel industry, and there is no obvious protein substitute for fish meal. So complete elimination of industrial fishing in not on in the short term," he said.
In Denmark about 6,000 jobs and 400 vessels are dependent on industrial fishing.
