Quotas, a longstanding grievance in the UK fishing industry, are the main area where fishermen would like to see change after Brexit. To put things simply, they want to be allowed to catch more of the fish in British waters, allowing them to drop prices and drive sales. Over half of the total catch is currently taken by fishermen from other EU member states, and while Brussels argues this is justified by the abundance of fish in British waters, UK skippers think a change of policy is long overdue.
“We think this just isn’t acceptable,” says Peter Bruce, skipper of the Budding Rose in Peterhead, Scotland. “Norway and Iceland get a much larger share of the catch in their waters, and so should we.” Some 95 per cent of UK fishermen voted to leave the EU, seeing Brexit as an opportunity to grow Britain’s fishing industry, which has been in decline for decades.
Jason Budd, who owns south-east London fishmonger FC Soper, talks nostalgically about a time when the catches in towns like Grimsby “were so fantastic that the whole town was employed”, but with quotas for UK boats cut and cut, he says the catch has decreased by around 60 per cent. “FC Soper’s been around for 121 years and I want my children and grandchildren to continue the business,” he says, “but if the waters keep getting overfished and we have our quotas cut, that won’t happen in the future.”
Inevitably, it is not as simple as just removing quotas after Brexit, however, since fish stocks have to be conserved and managed. If the UK opts to develop its own fisheries policy after Brexit, seafood industry blogger Mike Warner accepts that it will have to have elements of the EU’s Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) in it. First and foremost, he hopes quotas can be managed on a more geographical ‘fishery by fishery’ basis, making better use of science and real-time data. “At the moment there are sector quotas and they range across different species, with a lot of species lumped in together,” he explains. “For example, in a mixed fishery where cod, haddock and hake all swim together there’s disproportionate quotas on those species in some sectors so one species invariably ends up becoming a choked species.”
Bruce has similar criticisms, calling the CFP a “broad-brush approach” with conservation rules that “just weren’t suitable for the UK’s fisheries”. He is concerned that Brexit negotiations are taking too long and says the UK fishing industry is “lobbying very hard” for the UK to leave the CFP with no transition period.
Both are opposed to the idea of environmentally-linked support payments for fishermen, pointing to existing efforts by fishermen to protect the environment. These include the Fishing For Litter scheme in Scotland and the south west and the Marine Stewardship Council’s recovery programme for North Sea cod, which was granted sustainable status for the first time in 20 years last summer.
On the issue of labour, Brexit is yet to cause big labour shortages, Warner says, but the blogger expects potential restrictions to free movement to place greater emphasis on training for British fishermen. “Whitby Seafish Fishing School and Peterhead Maritime Academy are already running very good programmes for apprentices in fisheries and other maritime sectors,” he says, “but labour has been a problem for a long time anyway. There’s not the homegrown labour that there used to be.”
Labour shortages have affected offshore fleets more than the dayboats, which rely less on crew and are often single-handed.
In terms of trade, there is some concern that tariffs – which could apparently range from eight to 15 per cent depending on the species – could hinder sales to Europe. However, Warner is confident that EU countries will find a way to trade with the UK since 85 per cent of all UK shellfish exports headed for European shores in 2015, and the UK is developing new markets in Asia anyway.
“Exports are increasing, particularly in shellfish, with a lot of crab going to China and cuttlefish to South Korea,” Warner says. “Import and export tariffs are a likelihood but it’s how we negotiate a way around them that will count.”
