Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1-19)
3 NOVEMBER 2003
MR PETER
WINTERBOTTOM AND
MR DAVID
MUIRHEAD
Q1 Mr Mitchell: Welcome, gentlemen.
This is the very first session of our inquiry into the by-catches
and we are grateful to you for coming. Mr Winterbottom, you are
the Chief Executive of the Association of Sea Fisheries Committees
of England and Wales, and Mr Muirhead you are the Chairman of
the Cornwall Sea Fisheries Committee, and we have just been seeing
some videos of dolphins in the West Country, so we are prepared
to a degree. Thank you very much for coming along to help us.
We want you to brief us generally on what is happening and give
us the background. What fisheries are associated actually with
cetacean by-catches?
Mr Muirhead: In my opinion, the
main problem is the bass pair trawling, which is carried on primarily
by French boats but a few British trawlers as well. There is also
allegedly a problem with gill nets. I would not say that was a
major problem, there may be a very incidental by-catch. The other
type of fishery is what is called a tangle net. The gill net fisheries
is a fairly small-mesh fishery, in old money, up to about five
and a half inches mesh across. I am not very good on millimetres,
I am afraid. The other type of bottom net fishery is a tangle
net fishery, which is a bigger mesh, which is used for monk fish,
ray and turbot, and I am aware of occasional by-catch problems
with the tangle nets but not on a large scale. Going back to the
gill net, I must make the point that a gill net is a fairly small
mesh. To tangle cetacean, in my opinion, you need a fairly big
mesh net. If I could draw an analogy, something we all know about,
which is a tennis net, if you or I hit a tennis net we could not
possibly get tangled up in it, but if it were, say, a cat, it
might get its head through and get tangled up in it. By analogy,
a dolphin, in my opinion, really can get tangled up only in a
net that it can get its head into, because with a small mesh gill
net it will hit the net and bounce off again.
Q2 Mr Mitchell: Where is this damage
occurring, is it within the six miles or between six and 12? Where
is the problem? Are gill nets used within the six-mile limit?
Mr Muirhead: The gill nets are
set from the shore right out almost to the 200-mile limit, out
right across the Continental Shelf. The hake net boats do work
a long, long way out, almost within Irish waters, so that is a
vast area. The bass pair trawl fishery is off the South West.
I would have thought the main area that is fished is between Start
Point and The Lizard, and Land's End, probably, and probably from
our six-mile limit, because the French boats are not allowed inside
our six-mile limits, and, because of Cornish Sea Fisheries by-laws,
the British pair trawlers would not be allowed to work within
our six-mile limit. So I would have thought it would be between
the six-mile limit and the French coast. There have been reports
of large numbers of dead cetaceans being washed up on the French
coast from time to time, and it is thought that these come from
the bass pair trawl teams working off the French coast.
Q3 Mr Mitchell: Where does your writ
run, as Sea Fisheries Committees?
Mr Muirhead: Our jurisdiction
at the present time goes out to the six-mile limit from the shore.
Q4 Mr Mitchell: So not between the
six and the 12?
Mr Muirhead: No. We have no jurisdiction
at present between the six and the 12, that is controlled by Defra.
Q5 Mr Mitchell: You say in your evidence,
the statement, that the by-catch problem has "no direct management
implications for the [Sea Fisheries] Committees in the South West
of England." Therefore, are you saying that this by-catch
occurs only outside your area of jurisdiction?
Mr Muirhead: Yes. The bass pair
trawl problem is only outside the six-mile limit. A very limited
problem may occur within the six-mile limit where people are working
tangle nets, but it will be very limited.
Mr Winterbottom: If I may say
so, Chairman, that has not been demonstrated. What has been demonstrated
is that the bass pair trawl fishery is suspect and the hake fishery
in the Celtic Sea, a long way off Cornwall, almost on the Irish
side of the Celtic Sea. In that sense, those fisheries are outside
the Committees' jurisdiction.
Q6 Mr Mitchell: It is pursued mainly
by foreign, French vessels?
Mr Winterbottom: The bass fishery
is predominantly a French fishery. I think last season there were
four Scottish vessels, two pairs.
Mr Mitchell: Thank you.
Q7 Alan Simpson: You are opposed
to the European Commission's proposals, because you say that they
are disproportionate to the costs and the scale of the problem.
Do you not think that there is increased scope for cheating if
you have a distinction between the six-mile limit and beyond?
Mr Winterbottom: As far as one
knows, there is either no problem or virtually no problem in the
nought to six-mile area. That is why we said this approach of
pingers in all gill nets is disproportionate. It would be a much
better approach if the Commission's other route, of observers
in those inshore waters, ran first, to identify whether or not
there is a problem. If there is a problem then, yes, it must be
addressed.
Q8 Alan Simpson: The World Wildlife
Fund pointed out to us that to draw this distinction risks inviting
boats to nip in and out of the six-mile limit. In that case, if
there were scope for being able to evade the role that pingers
would play, would there be any merit in imposing restrictions
on the length of gill nets to be used within the zone?
Mr Winterbottom: The length of
gill net, I believe, in the Commission proposal, is a reference
to the Baltic Sea drift-net fishery only. Huge numbers of fishermen—net
fishermen, pot fishermen, shellfish pot fishermen—have what
they regard as their own ground, that is the ground they fish.
There is not necessarily an opportunity for offshore men to come
inshore because their brethren would say there was no space for
them.
Q9 Alan Simpson: Would it make sense
then to talk about restrictions targeted at particular types of
fishing, rather than the distance that the fishing takes place
from the coast? If we are trying to take an effective mechanism
that deals with by-catches, if you are saying, "Well, it's
a particular type of fishing," should we target the types
of fishing?
Mr Muirhead: We should be targeting
the bass pair trawling, immediately. Unfortunately, the EU proposals
suggest that the observer scheme should start in the winter of
2004-05. There is ample evidence that the bass pair trawlers are
causing the major problem. They are catching hundreds of cetaceans
during the winter season. The Defra trials, last winter, using
a separator grid, seemed to be fairly successful. As I have put
in my written submission, all boats targeting the bass fishery
should be using the separator grid immediately, observers should
be put on those boats and they should work out then whether or
not the separator grid is working. If we let this fishery go on
for another two winters, there will be hundreds, perhaps thousands,
more deaths of cetaceans, and at the end of the day the observers
will tell us only what we know already. It is as simple as that.
Q10 Alan Simpson: Do you consider
that bottom-set gill nets present any particular danger to harbour
porpoise?
Mr Muirhead: The gill nets, I
think, do not. As I said in my written submission, one of our
local skippers works gill nets through the winter, and he did
work them through last winter, and on one occasion the dolphins,
or porpoises, or both, were playing around the nets as he was
shooting them away. He was very concerned, and when he came to
pull the nets he did not catch one. There is a report in last
week's Fishing News, from a Devon skipper who has worked
hundreds of miles of gill nets over the years, and in his written
report he says that he has not caught one.
Q11 Mr Mitchell: The trouble is,
of course, if we want to accelerate action we have to do so on
the basis of evidence. When you are saying, "We don't need
observers, we already know," is that folklore or is that
an observable fact?
Mr Muirhead: There is evidence.
Dr Tregenza will have the facts and figures. I can dig it out
of my information. There is evidence that these trawlers do catch
cetaceans. The BBC produced a programme called Countryfile,
which demonstrated this. Unfortunately, I did not see it, but
I gather that was pretty conclusive evidence, and earlier trials
by both our Ministry and the Irish Ministry into pair trawling
have proved conclusively that it is a problem. The Wildlife Trust's
briefing to MEPs gives quite a lot of useful information about
the actual figures concerned, and, if you can get hold of that,
that will be well worth reading, if you have not got it already.
Q12 Diana Organ: I understand your
desire to make sure that when you are fishing you are not taking
on cetaceans, and you have said already that you do not think
it is a major problem from gill nets. I just wonder, because you
are concerned about the cost of putting pingers on every net,
but you have come up with an alternative. The Association suggested
having a net that is strong enough to keep fish in it while being
weak enough to allow the porpoise or dolphin to break free. Do
such nets exist currently and, if they do not, how long do you
think it is going to be before they will be available for fishermen
to use?
Mr Winterbottom: I think I am
right in saying that either Defra have just commissioned or they
are minded to commission research work on this point. Once facts
as to breaking strain and gauge of nylon, and so forth, are determined,
I would have thought there would be no difficulty at all in manufacturing
to those tolerances very quickly.
Q13 Diana Organ: The other thing
about that is, of course, you would not have the expense of the
pinger, but the new nets would be taken on as the fishermen replaced
their old ones. How long would that take? Obviously, nets have
a certain life and they are not all going to rush out and buy
the newly-developed Defra net, with its new breaking strength,
just because it is a good idea, they are going to take their time
on a cost basis of when their old ones run out. How long do you
think it is going to be before we get a fishery in the South West
that will have nets friendly for dolphins and porpoises?
Mr Muirhead: It depends on how
long the nets are worked. If I can take just one fishery in the
winter in the South West, it is a cod fishery, I would have thought
that the current nets have a life expectancy of probably two years.
Actually, it is not quite as devastating as it sounds, because
you have a head-rope, which is quite a thick rope with floats
on it, and a bottom-rope, which is a leaded rope, and you do not
replace the whole net, you cut the middle, or the net, off from
the ropes and replace it with new net. The actual sheet netting
is produced in the Far East and it is relatively inexpensive.
It could be done within a couple of years.
Q14 Diana Organ: Within a couple
of years, it could be that all the fisheries in the South West
would have this kind of friendly netting?
Mr Muirhead: Yes.
Mr Mitchell: If we started now.
Q15 Diana Organ: If we started now,
because Defra has not even developed it yet?
Mr Muirhead: That is right. With
respect, it would not need to be developed because already you
can buy a wide variety of different strengths of net. Some fishermen
do like to work a thinner twine, or monofilament twine, because
it catches fish better anyhow, because the lighter the net the
more efficient it is at catching fish. You have got to strike
a balance between having a net that is strong enough to withstand
the rigours of fishing and being caught on the bottom and having
a net that will catch fish successfully.
Q16 Mr Mitchell: Presumably, the
escape-friendly nets would not last as long?
Mr Muirhead: They would not, no.
Q17 Diana Organ: There is a cost
on that, the cost of replacing them?
Mr Muirhead: Yes.
Q18 Mr Breed: We were discussing
a little while ago the necessity of having observers on boats,
and so on. Defra is indicating at the moment that it will be done
on a voluntary basis that observers may go onto the boats. What
practical difficulties do you think they may encounter in putting
observers onboard boats?
Mr Muirhead: I am sorry to be
nationalistic but I think the British fishermen probably will
not have a problem with that, in fact they have gone along with
that already, but I fear there may be some resistance from the
French trawlermen. If I can diversify slightly, the EEC proposal
suggests that there are observers on five per cent of the boats,
and that will be mandatory, that the Member State puts observers
on five per cent of the boats. I think that is rather a low figure
and I would have thought, particularly in the height of the bass
trawling season, the figure should be more like 50% than 5%.
Q19 Mr Breed: As a mandatory legal
requirement?
Mr Muirhead: Within the Defra
proposal, it is a mandatory requirement, that the Member State
puts observers on five per cent of the vessels.
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