http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ire ... 63315.html
SEVERAL YEARS ago some well-known British chefs and food writers started campaigns to highlight one of the more wasteful practices that is encouraged by the EU’s Common Fisheries Policy – discarding fish that are not part of a vessel’s authorised quota or permitted percentage of “bycatch” in the net.
EU commissioner for maritime affairs Maria Damanaki took up the cause, seeking an immediate discard ban. “Pandering to the public relations campaigns of celebrity chefs” was how Killybegs Fishermen’s Organisation chief executive Seán O’Donoghue described the move.
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There is a long-held perception in the industry here that the heavyweight sections of national fleets – such as the Killybegs mackerel supertrawlers – and the member states with greater lobbying clout, such as the Netherlands, France and Spain, are not subject to the same level of control.
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Flannery estimated each of the all-weather factory ships can process at least 200 tonnes a day, “high grading” to select the largest and dumping or mincing the rest. He calculated that the total catch during a 150-day period amounted to some 1,680,000 tonnes of fish.
These vessels “do not enter Irish ports and are not subjected to any audits of inspections from the SFPA”, he said.
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“But if we are to manage the ocean space, rather than just managing cod in the Irish Sea, the main stakeholders – as in fishermen – have to believe they are an integral part of that.”
