January 16, 2018: Defying Brussels, EU parliament calls for ban on electric pulse fishing

The European Parliament called Tuesday for a ban on electric pulse fishing in the European Union, defying Brussels which wants the experimental practice in the North Sea done on a larger scale.

Rebecca Hubbard, director for the activist group Our Fish, praised the vote as a “huge win” for European seas, low-impact fishing and the public.

Original story on AFP: EU Parliament Calls for Ban on Electric Pulse Fishing

Euractive: EU Parliament Calls for Ban on Electric Pulse Fishing

The Times, UK, January 17, 2018: Trawlers head for ban on shock fishing by Ben Webster.

MEPs voted by 402 votes to 232 yesterday for a total ban on “pulse fishing”, which the European Commission says needs to be used partly in order to study its impact.

Our Fish, which campaigns for sustainable fishing, said: “Today’s vote by the European parliament is a huge win for European seas, low impact fishers and the public. It also shows that new fishing methods must be studied on the basis of independent science before they can be pushed out for commercial use.”

January 17th 2018: Respaldo del PE a una prohibición definitiva de la pesca eléctrica

El Parlamento Europeo (PE) ha apoyado las reivindicaciones de las organizaciones ecologistas y ha pedido la prohibición definitiva de la pesca eléctrica en aguas comunitarias. En la Unión Europea (UE) solo está permitida para buques del mar del Norte, sobre todo holandeses.

Organizaciones ecologistas, agrupadas en la iniciativa “Our Fish“, valoraron hoy el voto del PE “para detener la agresiva expansión de la pesca con impulsos eléctricos” y lo consideraron “una tremenda victoria para los mares europeos” para los pescadores a pequeña escala y para el público.

“También demuestra que los nuevos métodos pesqueros deben ser estudiados sobre la base de estudios científicos independientes antes de poder ser impulsados para su uso comercial”, añadió una portavoz de la organización.

By Fiona Harvey in the Guardian, January 16th, 2018:

Rebecca Hubbard, programme director of Our Fish, one of a group of conservation groups lobbying for the EU pulse fishing ban to be reinstated, told the Guardian: “Pulse fishing is not proven to be better than bottom trawling in terms of ecological impacts. It just uses less fuel, so is more profitable for vessels to run. It is an indiscriminate method of fishing with ten times more discards than low impact methods, and there is no independent science on impacts to marine life living in the sediment, or species such as sharks and rays. Beam trawls are extremely destructive, but replacing them with electric pulse trawling is not the answer.”

Read more: European parliament to decide future of pulse fishing

From Undercurrent, 16 January 2018:

Members of European parliament have voted in favor of prohibiting electric pulse fishing in European waters, at the technical measures regulation vote on Jan. 16.

MEPs voted 402 to 232 for the prohibition, according to NGO Our Fish.

“Today’s vote by the European Parliament to stop the aggressive expansion of electric pulse fishing is a huge win for European seas, low impact fishers and the public,” said Our Fish program director Rebecca Hubbard.

“It also shows that new fishing methods must be studied on the basis of independent science before they can be pushed out for commercial use. Instead of developing another industrial fishery with high exploitation capacity, EU governments must get back to the urgent job of ending overfishing, and deliver truly sustainable fisheries management that benefits our marine ecosystems and coastal fishing communities.”

Continue reading “EU votes to ban pulse fishing”

Undercurrent article from January 9 2018, based on this press release.

As the European Parliament prepares to vote on whether to restore the 1998 ban on electric fishing, or to authorize its wide use throughout Europe, a group of NGOs and fisher organizations have sent a joint letter to the European Commission claiming questions over the morality of its 2006 proposal to lift the ban on electric fishing.

According to France’s Bloom Association, the letter reveals expert scientific advice to the commission was blatantly ignored, and the NGO has requested the European Commission immediately withdraw all provisions concerning electric fishing from its legislative proposal on the technical measures regulation, which will be voted by the European Parliament on Jan. 16 2018.

A number of UK fishing groups, and NGO Our Fish, has also countersigned the letter.

They claim the December 2006 decision to allow a limited number of vessels to use electric current fishing — referring to favorable scientific advice — in fact ignores advice to the contrary.

“Bloom eventually found the document: a STECF (Scientific, Technical and Economic Committee for Fisheries) Report from Nov. 6–10 2006. Contrary to the December 2006 European Regulation, which considers that ‘fishing with beam trawl using electrical pulse current should be allowed’, the scientific advice dated one month earlier warns against ‘a number of issues that need to be resolved before any derogation can be granted’.”

“Thus, not only has the scientific body of the European Commission never approved such derogations, but it even explicitly advised the European Commission against granting any. Under the pressure of Dutch fishing lobbies, the European Commission decided not only to ignore its own committee of experts but also to falsely claim scientific guidance in support of its decision to revoke the ban on electric fishing.”

The NGOs and fisher groups signing the letter to the EU claim this is a fishing method with high negative impacts on ecosystems, yet under EU dispensation vessels utilizing the fishing method have been able to claim millions of euros of public money.

“As things stand, the scale of the financial scandal cannot be fully grasped because the Netherlands fails to publish the file of public subsidies allocated from 2007 to 2014, making it impossible to calculate the total subsidies granted to electric fishing since the introduction of derogations,” said Bloom.

“However, Bloom has managed to estimate the subsidies allocated since August 2015. In just over two years, at least €5.7 million of public subsidies have been allocated for the development of industrial electric fishing fleets in the Netherlands, of which €3.8m come from European funds (67% of the total). These public subsidies have been allocated under the titles of ‘research’, ‘innovation’ and ‘best practices’.”

The Dutch Fisheries Association did not respond to request for comment from Undercurrent News. In November 2017, when the EU proposed the new rules to be voted on on Jan. 16, the association’s head Derk Berends told Undercurrent this was a chance for the practice to prove its sustainability.

“It’s an opportunity for all NGOs and fishermen that are questioning this innovative technique to get all the answers they need.”

Original article: NGOs, fishing groups claim EU has allowed pulse fishing on false grounds

Agrifish meeting outcome angers campaign group

Published by Undercurrent News on December 19th, 2017:

Outcomes at the Agrifish council meeting, held Dec. 11-13, have allowed overfishing to continue on a number of stocks in the North Sea and Atlantic, according to campaign group Our Fish.

During the annual meeting EU fisheries ministers negotiated fishing limits for more than 120 fish stocks. In its initial summary statements, the council announced that total allowable catch for 53 fish stocks are now in line with scientific advice (a sustainable catch rate), up from 44 in 2017, equivalent to approximately two-thirds of the stocks that have sufficient scientific data to assess maximum sustainable yield (MSY).

“While there appears to have been some progress towards reining in overfishing, EU fisheries ministers displayed an unsurprising lack of ambition to deliver sustainable management for all EU fish stocks,” said Our Fish program director Rebecca Hubbard.

“These late night Agrifish meetings still demonstrate a dangerous culture, with EU fisheries ministers treating the law as flexible, making decisions behind closed doors, and cherry picking winners and losers, instead of ending overfishing of all fish stocks.”

With just two years left until the 2020 deadline, fisheries ministers need to “invoke some political courage to act on behalf of EU citizens, and the future health of European fish stocks — not just the interests of a few big industry players”, continued Hubbard.

One of the biggest problems faced in European seas is that despite a landing obligation coming into force, discarding isn’t sufficiently controlled, she said.

“When discarding isn’t controlled and top-ups are added to total allowable catches, stocks are not safe”, said Sascha Muller-Kraenner, executive director of Environmental Action Germany (Deutsche Umwelthilfe). “Four years after the reform of the common fisheries policy was agreed, we would have expected increased efforts by Germany’s agriculture minister Christian Schmidt to tackle the problem of overfishing — as obliged by law.”

During the meeting, ministers failed to recognize the Celtic Sea as a region that should be protected from overfishing, said Our Fish. The EU Council set the quotas for whiting, cod and haddock significantly above the EU commission’s proposal, including a 23% increase for haddock

Published by Undercurrent News on December 19th, 2017: