Campaigners demand selective fishing after £1bn cod discarded

Published on Sunday 31 July 2011 15:52

Britain has discarded nearly £1 billion in cod from one population in the last 50 years, a report has revealed.

According to its findings, the wasted fish would have supported more than 700 jobs for 46 years.

Had they been left in the sea with time to grow, they could have been worth around 2.6 bn to the UK economy.

Campaigners are calling for more selective fishing in the North Sea and the Eastern Channel which would allow stocks to develop.

The report comes just weeks after the European Commission unveiled sweeping reforms to the controversial Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) which aim to boost dangerously depleted populations.

The plans centre on ending a long-standing system of catch quotas which encourage fishermen to dump surpluses back in the sea - the so-called "discard" problem.

Researchers from think-tank NEF, the New Economics Foundation, said the "piecemeal" approach fails to address the issue of widespread discarding of non-quota species and provides no incentive to prevent unwanted catches.

NEF environmental economics researcher and author of the report Rupert Crilly warned against encouraging the consumption of certain species, suggesting such a solution could pile even more pressure on endangered stocks.

"Everyone can see that discards are hugely wasteful but far more wastage comes from overfishing: taking more than what the oceans can produce," he said.

"Action to end discards must be accompanied with action to restore fish stocks.

"Avoiding discards in the first place is more important than the creation of markets for unwanted species.

"Promoting the consumption of unwanted species is a risky gamble which could lead to more demand for fish and put more pressure on our fish stocks.

"Eating more fish will do little to end overfishing."

According to the NEF research, around 2.7bn worth of cod has been discarded in the North Sea, the English Channel and Skagerrak since 1963.

Of this, the UK threw away 935 million, missing out on 711 additional British jobs.

If fish had been left in the sea during this period, the cod population would have been on average 13.2 per cent larger year-on-year leading to an increase in profits and jobs, it found.

Meanwhile, the small fish spared would have had time to grow and could have weighed up to 9.26 million tonnes - almost five times the weight at which they were actually discarded (2.14m tonnes).

This would have been worth 2.6bn to the UK economy. Instead they were thrown away for nothing, the researchers said.

Fish are usually discarded because they are unwanted, not profitable enough or do not conform to fishing regulations.

Ian Campbell, from Ocean2012, a group which campaigns for reform to the CFP, said: "We're calling for a carefully implemented discard ban aimed at reducing unwanted fish and by-catch, not the creation of new markets for them."

Fisheries minister Richard Benyon said: "This report shows exactly why we need to end the unacceptable practice of throwing dead fish back to the sea.

"It's a terrible waste of perfectly good food and one of the biggest failings of the Common Fisheries Policy. The current CFP has not given us healthy fish stocks and it has not delivered a sustainable living for our fishing industry."

2.7bn - Estimated value of cod discarded in North Sea, English Channel and Skagerrak since 1963

935m - The value of cod discarded by Britain since 1963

13.2% - How much bigger the cod population would be if the discards had not happened