Fishermen urge Islanders to sign online petition
Thursday 20th January 2011, 2:56PM GMT.
Robbie Colligny and Don Thompson with some undulate ray caught in Jersey waters
A JERSEY fisherman is urging Islanders to back a campaign led by celebrity chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall which calls for the scrapping of controversial EU fishing quotas.
More than 550,000 people have so far signed a petition against quotas after the plight of commercial fishermen was highlighted in the BBC’s recent Big Fish Fight series.
The series showed fishermen being forced to throw back huge quantities of cod which they were banned from landing because they had already filled their annual quota.
Don Thompson, head of the Jersey Fishermen’s Association, is now urging Islanders to show their opposition to EU fishing laws by signing the online petition.
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Whilst I agree that throwing back dead fish is wasteful, I have to ask why a species is still being caught after the quota has been filled. Surely the fishing methods need to be addressed as well since current practices are clearly not able to selectively catch (and in most cases immediatly kill) either the correct species or the correct size
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Makes complete sense…I’m in.
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Silly question, if the fishermen on the show ‘ Big Fish Fight’ had already filled their annual quota. Why were they still fishing and throwing the fish back?
That would only cause unnecessary stress to the fish.
Personally I feel we should have no fish zones that last two years so the fish can repopulate.
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I think this is a great idea, even with modern techiniques for fishing you cant accurately predict exactly what fish you’ll catch. If the quote is for total fish caught then which ever fish are most plentiful will be the ones caught the most, nothing gets wasted and hopefully the price of fish will come down for end consumers.
We’ll also get to see lots of varieties of fish that would normally be thrown back as waste, just because they are not on the trawlers shopping list!
A method of protecting certain areas to ensure that stocks are not completely harvested should also be put into place and heavier fines/jail for those that fish outside the designated areas.
Get rid of these rediculous quotas and stop wasting fish discriminately
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Link :http://www.fishfight.net/
Please sign it if you support the change to pointless quotas introduced to preserve the stocks when all it has done; is mean the fisherman still unavoidably catch the fish due to the way that they fish for other species, then just throw the dead fish back….. so not really helping the stocks.
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You can sign up here, probably do well to “like” it on facebook also : )
http://www.fishfight.net/
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Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall’s campaign is NOT simply calling for “the scrapping of controversial EU fishing quotas” as the article above says. That would just set us back again to the point where fish stocks were again being driven to extinction.
The campaign is calling for the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) to be changed so that “discards” no longer happen which may be by altering the quota system, banning discards setting up “no take” zones etc. There is no one solution to this problem and sound bite journalism does not help to get this over.
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fish finder (7) You can sign up here
Done !
ckh (4) Why were they still fishing and throwing the fish back?
Because the fishermen cannot predict which type of fish is about to swim into their net!
Nick Palmer (8) . There is no one solution to this problem
No Nick, there is no simple solution. But the current solution is a nonsense. Spanish fishermen, have boats registered in British ports to fish a British fisherman (perfectly legal), which does nothing to save fish stocks or fishing industry jobs. The EU is a common market hence we need a common solution.
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