[Lucysgirl]

I'm enjoying this debate Margaret, but I think I might have to make more than one posting to cover the points you made.


You said:- "A couple of years ago there was a huge outcry against the practice of fish being caught and not being saleable due to some barmy EU regulations."


For the last 30-40 years I have had steam coming out of my ears and I bounce off the ceiling whenever the subject of EU Agriculture and Fisheries Policy comes up. I've written to every government and given poor Greg Pope an ear bashing - all agree with me but the wheels of the Commission grind slow. I was most definitely put off Farage and his party when he couldn't be bothered to attend the meetings to set up a revised policy.
I totally blame the Commission's dunderhead short sighted Fisheries Policy these last several decades for the decline in fish stocks. The scheduling of these meetings has to change and also the length of time taken to change regulations has to be shortened and red tape got rid of..

The members sitting in the Commission seem to have all read some rosey book that historically describes a collection of fishermen's boats in a harbour/port as a "herring fleet" or "deep sea cod fleet". From these phrases they set out the regulations whereby a boat owner is allowed to catch a quota of a specific species. They also didn't take into account that fish don't live in one space, they travel about thus in a week when ther's no herring the fishermen return empty handed, yet in another week there's an abundance of them but the regulations were so rigid that the catch had to be restrained and even a small excess of herring had to be thrown back into the sea..
Just like on terraferma, there's a pecking order where large fish of prey, such as cod, eat smaller fish and smaller fish eat even smaller fish, etc., etc.
e.g. mackerel eat sardines..... pollack, hake, tuna and dogfish all eat herring

This means that even though a fishing boat might have gone fishing for a shoal of herring he would most likely catch the fish that was preying on the herring. Once upon a time all fish could be brought back to the fish market and sold, but under the Commission's regulations that ended. No account was taken that fish mingle in the sea and tons of unlicenced (and unfortunately dead or dying) fish were having to be thrown back into the sea.

The silliest scenario I ever saw was in a "fly on the wall" documentary where several small fishing boats had seen on their radar an absolutely massive shoal of herring. When the nets were hauled out of the water it was discovered that they were full of fish officially called "sprats" (very small type of herring). Of coure they had to be thrown back into the sea for the seagulls to gorge themselves on. Yet within view was a very large trawler happily hauling in net after net of the sprats because they had an appropriate licence

There's one sad postscript to the town I was born in. The fishing port is devoid of ships and buildings, as the latter have been demolished.but not replaced. The fishermen families want a memorial to the men who sailed and died at sea. The bright young things and sophisticated incomers on the council have allocated what they think is a suitable space for this, which has upset the locals because that just happens to be where for hundreds of years the fish guts and entrails were cast.