Blaming French trawlers for the decline in sea bass around our shores has been a popular pastime among British fishermen for years. Now that argument is wearing thin as figures show a leap in the amount of bass caught by British boats, despite evidence that the stock is close to collapsing.
British commercial fishermen caught 1,041 tonnes of bass last year, up more than a quarter on the 817 tonnes caught in 2013, according to the Marine Management Organisation. The International Council for the Exploration of the Sea recommended last July that the total bass catch throughout the English Channel, Irish Sea, Celtic Sea and southern North Sea should be cut by 80 per cent to 1,155 tonnes.
The British fleet alone is now close to catching the recommended limit, even if no bass were caught by the much larger French fleet or fishermen from the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany or Denmark.
In January the European Commission imposed an emergency ban on trawling for bass until the end of April, when the fish will have finished spawning. The ban primarily affected 70 French trawlers, which operate in pairs and tow giant nets. British fishermen target bass mainly using small boats, which escaped the ban.
However, many of these small boats use a relatively new method of fishing called trammel netting, in which three vertical layers of different size meshes are drifted on to spawning shoals of bass.
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The result is that fishermen are hauling in the breeding stock of bass, leaving a gap in the population that could bring collapse of the stock by 2018.
Martin Salter, of the Angling Trust, which represents game, coarse and sea anglers, said: “These figures are proof that the commercial sector is hellbent on catching all the bass it can, irrespective of the dire warnings from the scientists that stocks are in a parlous state and need to be preserved. The government needs to stop dragging its feet over introducing catch limits in UK territorial waters.”
Malcolm Gilbert, conservation officer for the Cornish Federation of Sea Anglers, said that the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs had failed to take sufficient action to protect bass. “You have to wonder why they pay for the research. It seems they get the science then ignore it.”
Charles Clover, the chairman of Blue Marine Foundation, a conservation charity, said: “British fishermen based at ports all the way from Lincolnshire to Sussex are taking too many bass. We need a scientifically based management plan with clearly understood limits on all fishing methods.”
British fishermen are resisting a French proposal for bass to be subject to quotas apportioned according to previous activity, meaning that French boats would get the greatest share. The commission has proposed a minimum size of 42cm — instead of the present 36cm — for bass caught and killed to allow them to reach sexual maturity and spawn.
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George Eustice, the fisheries minister, said: “We support the emergency measures taken by the European Commission to protect the declining stock. We are now working with other member states to agree a wider package of measures, paving the way for the stock to recover.”