To fish or not to fish in the EU? A guest blog from Dr Euan Dunn

There has been a lot of codswallop said during the course of the EU Referendum campaign and some of it has focused on the Common Fisheries Policy.  So on the eve of Nigel Farage leading a pro-Brexit flotilla up the Thames, (see here) I am delighted to welcome a guest blog from Dr Euan Dunn MBE, Principal Marine Advisor for the RSPB.  Euan has huge experience of understanding and influencing the interactions between fisheries and marine birds, nationally and internationally.  So, when it comes to assessing the implications of the the EU Referendum for fisheries and the marine environment, Euan is well placed to help us separate fish-fact from fish-fiction.  

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The sight of a flotilla of UK vessels sailing up the Thames to highlight fishermen’s support for leaving the EU and its Common Fisheries Policy may stir the hearts of a nation with a visceral attachment to the sea and to the British staple of fish and chips.  On the face of it, there’s a simple logic to repatriating our fishing waters and unhitching ourselves from a Brussels-crafted policy described by the House of Lords European Union Committee in 2008 as having, ‘one of the most dismal reputations of any EU policy’. 

But much has changed since the Lords’ recommendations for making the CFP fit for purpose.  With its 2013 reform (spearheaded by the UK), the CFP is heading in the right direction and our hard-working fishermen are benefiting, along with those of other Member States. After decades of overfishing, North Sea cod is recovering strongly and the majority of assessed North Atlantic stocks are now considered to be sustainably fished.

Fishing boats off the Isle of Skye waiting for the outcome of the EU Referendum? (Credit, Euan Dunn)

The new CFP also made an unprecedented shift away from regarding our waters as just a factory floor for the fishing industry, towards managing them as a marine ecosystem.  The obligation to lighten the environmental footprint of commercial fishing, such as tackling the needless bycatch of seabirds in fishing gears, has been written into statute.

But, if the EU marine cake is looking healthier, many UK fishermen still crave a bigger slice ie a larger quota of fish.  The UK’s current share is the result of a settlement dating back to the dawn of the CFP in 1983.  And in fact we came out of it pretty well with some 30% of the EU’s total catch, even though we only have 13% of the total EU sea area.  This quota is then divided between the big offshore operators and the small-scale inshore boats, with the latter rightly crying foul that they get too little, but this inequality is purely in the gift of the UK Government to remedy, and has nothing whatsoever to do with Brussels. 

So the fundamental question arises: would UK fishermen be better off if we left the EU and ring-fenced our own waters?  Part of the answer lies in the fallacy of ‘ring-fence’.  As is often said, fish have no passports, crossing borders with impunity. The western mackerel stock undertakes a formidable migration from the Iberian peninsula to the arctic, while herring, cod and other species are also highly mobile ‘straddling stocks’.  So it’s fanciful to think that UK waters, unlike an isolated outpost like Iceland, translate into bespoke UK fish that we can herd for our own use. To enjoy the access we have to fish today, a UK outside of the EU would have to negotiate bilateral access agreements with a host of Member States as hard-headed as we are about securing a, let’s say, "squid pro quo".  And the time taken to broker this would create major uncertainty for the industry and its market.  The tortuous agreement the EU negotiates annually with Norway would have to be replicated by the UK with all its fishing neighbours.

Moreover, a scenario of UK waters for UK fishing vessels poses an immense challenge of policing our fishing limits, this at a time when our enforcement agency, the Marine Management Organisation (MMO), has suffered swingeing budget cuts (see here).  We would have to aspire to Norway which invests heavily in its fisheries control and penalises malpractice heavily, so much so that our skippers fish warily in its waters. Norway, like Iceland, is also part of the European Economic Area (EEA) which a post-Brexit UK would have to seek to re-join (if the rest of the EU agreed). This just piles the pressure on our fishing industry which exports 45% of its catch, four-fifths of which goes to EU countries. 

Commercial fishing is a dangerous trade; working the sea calls for a special kind of commitment.  In many ways, our fishermen have been the victims of decades of mismanagement but the multi-national waters they ply are showing healthy signs of recovery under an ambitious new CFP.  As the flotilla steers a course up the Thames, its crews might well reflect that arguably greater hidden dangers lurk in the stormy waters they are supposedly leaving, were they to cast adrift  from their EU shipmates.