Provided he can spot a bit of codswallop it doesn't matter too much whether or not the Fisheries Minister can recognise a cod.
The seas around us used to be much richer in wildlife - it's difficult for us to recognise the changes because most of us can't get out and mix it in the marine world. But the fisheries data are stark from across the world. Here's a rather outdated link for cod in the North Sea - things have got a bit better since this.
Less than a hundred years ago there was a bluefin tuna fishery in the North Sea - now they are gone. Fish species after fish species has been depleted - overfished.
We need to give fish stocks a chance to recover and then there would be more fish in the sea and more fish that we could take out of the sea.
A love of the natural world demonstrates that a person is a cultured inhabitant of planet Earth.
Carduus
But why would they need to discard anything if they were required to land, and were legally entitled to sell, everything they caught? Isn't that the very nature of the Norwegian model you were proposing? I realise that the indiscriminate nature of a mixed fishery means that endangered species such as skate and halibut couldn't be excluded from the catch, but presumably that's where the MCZs come in - provided they're sufficiently extensive to be effective. If further monitoring were required, surely that would be accomplished through spot checks by fisheries protection vessels, as now?
Raingoose,
I was referring to monitoring to ensure that no fish are discarded, rather than monitoring of days at sea. For the discards, I don't know if you'd need actual observers on board or if technology could do the job.
This campaign by Hugh Fearnley Whiitinstall to ban the process of discarding fish seems to be a fantastic success. Already within a day or two 271,000 people have signed his petition online.
It is worth while signing here at http://www.fishfight.net/
This is the kind of person you want backing the RSPB. Maybe as regards albatross and fish hooks in the southern oceans
Another point missed here includes the benefit to big gulls feeding on all this discard. They go off and breed around sea bird colonies and feed on Puffins, Guillemots, Razorbills and Kittiwakes with the effect of reducing populations. Take away this free food at sea and what will happen on their breeding grounds!!
The monitoring system you propose already exists, or could easily be adapted from the AIS transponders fitted to most (all?) large vessels. Registered fishing vessels could be required to fit AIS if they aren't already. You can view the positions and courses of ships on a live map at the website http://www.marinetraffic.com - and there are certainly at least some fishing vessels shown.
A thought about marine conservation and no-take zones. There is a huge offshore wind farm to be built on the Dogger Bank in the next few years - a traditional fishing area for cod. Might this create a de facto MCZ, if the density of turbines effectively excludes trawling operations? That would be a brilliant double whammy, but is probably to good to be true.