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 Here's a rather outdated link for cod in the North Sea - things have got a bit better since this.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.
All - great comments. I will come back to this in more detail soon.
'MLS above breeding size' might help a bit, but the problem is less the fact that fish are being caught before breeding and more the absence of large mature adults capable of producing large numbers of eggs. Also, by changing the landing size you run the risk of just increasing discards rather than actually reducing catches. Much better to require fisherman to land everything they catch (as is the case in Norway), but to limit fishing effort by reducing days at sea. Presumably you would need to have some kind of monitoring system for each boat to prevent illegal discarding, although I'm not sure how much that would cost.
MCZs might have limited benefit for pelagic species, but making large areas off limits to bottom trawling is surely essential for demersal species such as halibut and skate, both of which have been pretty much wiped out in the North Sea. Plus of course other bottom-dwelling organisms which are also destroyed by trawling.
Is anything more stupid than half the catch of fish being thrown back in the sea than is the case with cod that is dead already.
Not sure things have got better for cod Mark - the scientists still say the catch should be zero - and have done for the last 10 years or so.
The public and politicians need to stop listening to bleating commercial fishermen. There's only 6,000 of them in England and Wales - more are employed by the lawnmower industry (a famous quote from John Gummer there!) and yet they have so much political power, and the immediate ear of government. Why? History that's all.
Orgs like the RSPB should be playing a frontline role in destroying these myths - I hope they are, but fear they aren't. Only when that is done will the Kittewakes fly shorter distances for their food.
and redkite - MCZs aren't the whole answer. Very little peer reviewed science on their benefits - but they make good copy. They are pretty poor at regenerating fish stocks - because fish tend to move about! For cod - perhaps the whole of the North Sea should be an MCZ? Great for sedentary species though, not so great for pelagics. MCZ the spawning agregations? Yes. Will that ever happen when the commercial minimum landing size (MLS) for EVERY FISH that swims is under their breeding size? No. Reason? See above.
RSPB should be blowing the 'MLS above breeding size' trumpet until its blue in the face - no other issue would improve fish stocks so quickly, and bird numbers!
It can then move onto bigger issues but until that is sorted there is no moral, let alone any other authority, to talk to any politician.
Mark
What's the RSPB's position on the issue of discards and fair and sensible quota systems? I imagine most viewers of that programme will have been shocked and disgusted at the amount of prime white fish which was being thrown back in to the sea, which benefited neither fisherman nor consumer - not to mention the cod population. Even one of the skippers interviewed seemed to make a case for limiting days at sea for the mixed fishery vessels, rather than a total annual take. This would seem to be a more progressive and less wasteful approach, but there are very likely drawbacks I haven't thought of and weren't aired in the TV programme. The minister seemed to hint at some possible third way, but it sounded rather vague - can you enlighten us at all?