LARGE wind turbines should not be sited where fishermen can at present fish to the east of Jersey, a meeting of the joint advisory committee and joint management committee working on the provisions of the Granville Bay fisheries treaty agreed recently.
Discussions on siting wind turbines have been taking place for the past two years or more, and interest in the idea of placing turbines near the Ecréhous has been shown by Eléctricité de France.
The first meetings in Jersey of the two committees took place recently, opened by former Senator Pierre Horsfall, who was instrumental in the 14-year negotiations that led to the signing of the Anglo-French treaty.
Previous meetings of the committees have taken place, but this was the first to be held in the Island.
Advisory committee members always attend from Jersey, Normandy and Brittany, as well as Jersey and French administrators and scientists of both nationalities.
The joint management committee is made up of officials from the French and Jersey governments and scientific advisers.Also agreed were the size and number of scallop dredges worked on a vessel, a limitation of the size of beam trawlers in the Bay of Granville area, the dates for the annual spider crab closure and the designation of certain areas as Ramsar sites.A number of EU regulations were also discussed concerning sole conservation, marking of static gear, dolphin pingers, observers of fishing vessels and beam trawling.The joint management committee also considered a number of technical administrative issues.Both meetings were said afterwards to be extremely productive and a number of important issues are to be taken back to respective national governments for consideration.
The next meeting of both the committees will take place in France in July.French press who attended the opening of the meeting said that this could serve as a model for the EU, with local fishermen and administrators with local knowledge looking after conservation issues at local levels rather than at ‘remote’ EU levels.
Article posted on 27th March, 2004 - 12.00am
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