The UK Fisherman's Tales from Glory to Despair to Success

Detail of Cod Scale

With the UK fishing industry crying betrayal at the government's backing down on repatriation of fishing rights on brexit and during the transition period, I wanted to have a look at the issue. The first important discovery was, that it is important to have islands around your nation. These help you extend the area that is recognised as your Exclusive Economic Zone. The UK does rather well, with an EEZ of 6.8 million square kilometers of sea, with most of it extending out from the North of England and Scotland as there are fewer landborders with other countries to limit it.

The EU Common Fsheries Policy decided that the allocation of proportions of the total catch of any type of fish would be decided by where fishing had been traditionally been conducted by different nations in 1970 as a reference point. This was unfortunate for the UK as at that time most of our fishing fleets were fishing off the coast of Iceland, that is, until Iceland extended its territorial waters by 200 miles and excluded the UK fleet.

The next blow to UK and EU fishing was the imposition of fishing quotas, in an attempt to limit overfishing. This crudely limited the time boats were allowed at sea and how much fish they could land in that period. The quotias were routinely set politically above the minimum levels for sustainable fishing. So fishing boats were limited in what they caught and fish still kept declining. Whilst there were nearly 50,000 fishers in the UK in 1948, numbers sank to about 20,000 by 1976, remained steady till 1994 and then began to decline to a present figure of around 6,000 vessels. Admittedly some of them were much larger and more efficient, but it was still a drastic decline.

The EU introduced stricter regulation coupled with more effective monitoring of catch and realistic, science based quotas. The result, fish stocks began to recover and become sustainably fished in this new century.

Brexit appeared to provide the possibility of righting an historical wrong, where nearly 60% of fish and shellfish were caught by EU vessels in UK waters. A simplistic view of take back our waters and return to a new dawn of British fisheries beckoned. The Scottish Fishermen's Federation commissioned an Opinion Paper by Robin Churchill, Emeritus Professor of International Law, University of Dundee which found that yes, the UK could boot off all foreigners and allow the (mainly Scottish) fleet to rule the British Seas once more.

But with the UK fishing industry forming only 0.5% of the UK's GDP, they were an easy sacrifice to make for the sake of a larger picture of agreeing the transition arrangement for the UK leaving the EU, though Michael Gove probably phrased it a bit more diplomatically in parliament today.

Then there are of course the practical realities. Many of the different fish species spawn in areas outside of our EEZ and migrate into it as adults where they are caught. There is also the political reality that, just as in the UK, other EU nations view their fishing fleets in an iconic historical light out of proportion to their actual value to the economy. The last thing any government wants is a messy cod war with trading neighbours.

Yet there is also some pride to be had in our modern fishing industry. We might only have 30 to 40% of the catch BUT, this is equal in value to the catch in our EEZ by the other EU nation's fleets combined. We go for better quality fish and also higher value shellfish such as nephrops (scampi to you and me). 

In fact, the UK has risen in the fishing league table in the EU, to quote the Fullfact article on the issue:

'The UK’s share of the overall EU fishing catch grew between 2004 and 2014. In 2004 the UK had the fourth largest catch of any EU country at 652,000 tonnes, by 2014 this had grown to 752,000 tonnes and the second largest catch of any country in the EU.'