A recent report entitled ‘The effects of 118 years of industrial fishing on UK bottom trawl fisheries’ written by Ruth H. Thurstan, Simon Brockington & Callum M. Roberts is causing quite a storm claiming the decline in UK fish stocks has been worse than previously feared and that the “extraordinary” falls in species such as cod, haddock and plaice have been masked by developments in the fleet which have allowed boats to trawl further, deeper and faster.

Unsurprisingly there have been some very strong responses -

• Simon Brockington, head of conservation at the MCS, said: “Over a century of intensive trawl fishing has severely depleted UK seas of bottom-living fish like halibut, turbot, haddock and plaice. The reform of the Common Fisheries Policy needs to set recovery targets much more ambitious than they currently are.”
• Professor Callum Roberts, from York University’s environment department, said the research made clear that fisheries were in a far worse state than even the most pessimistic of assessments currently in circulation.
• Mallaig and North West Fishermen’s Association secretary John Hermse said no one would take the report seriously.
• John Buchan, a skipper from Peterhead said the findings were “absolute rubbish”
• SWFPA executive chairman Mike Park indicated he was comfortable that recent measures were returning stocks to healthy levels and that steps to significantly reduce the number of discards – over-quota fish dumped at sea – would lead to further improvements.

Philip MacMullen, head of environmental responsibility at the UK’s industry-funded Seafish organisation was less sure, suggesting that accenting the historical picture could obscure more recent improvements, saying "It could be correct but I don’t know, and I don’t think the data support the findings

"But it’s old news. Fifteen years ago we started understanding how badly management was working, and 10 years ago we started doing something about it."

You can read the report yourself Nature Communication website or download it in pdf here.

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