Oral Evidence

Taken before the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee:

Cetacean By-Catch Sub-Committee on Wednesday 3 December 2003

Members present

Ms Candy Atherton, in the Chair

Mr Colin Breed

Mr David Drew

Mr Mark Lazarowicz

Mr Austin Mitchell

Alan Simpson

________________

Memorandum submitted by The National Federation of Fishermen's Organisations

Examination of Witness

Witness: MR BARRIE DEAS, Chief Executive, The National Federation of Fishermen's Organisations, examined.

Q142 Chairman: Good afternoon. We very much welcome Barrie Deas to our Sub-Committee of the EFRA Select Committee on cetacean by-catch. Can I, before we start, thank my colleague, Austin Mitchell, who took the first two sessions of this Sub-Committee while I was in hospital and I am very grateful for his help and we will be working together on the Report. We very much welcome you, Mr Deas. Can I start by asking in terms of your members' experience how significant you believe the cetacean by-catch problem is in terms of the overall population levels?

Mr Deas: First of all, thanks very much for the invitation to put the industry perspective. The UK Response Strategy document gives the impression that the size of the by-catch problem and its impact on the total populations is well defined, well measured and understood and I think that is far from true in that there is a great deal of uncertainty here. There is a problem with by-catch in specific fisheries at specific times of the year and under specific conditions and I think that is very important because there is a need to target measures. The Commission's response and to a degree the UK Response Strategy, I think, misses the point and seeks solutions in blanket measures so that the question of where the problem lies, I think, is a fundamental one. I think that there should be no misunderstanding. The fishing industry wants to work towards the elimination of the cetacean by-catch. It is recognised as an iconic group of species. It is what the environmentalists call 'charismatic meta-species' which draws attention to that particular feature. The cetacean by-catch has a damaging effect on the public perception of the industry and for that reason alone I think we need to do something about it. It is self-interest to reduce the by-catch of dolphins and porpoises to a minimum, but I think partly because of the public and media interest, the Commission and the UK are blundering somewhat. I think it is very interesting that in previous evidence to this Committee, the experts, in particular Dr Tregenza, do not attribute the perceived decline in cetaceans to the by-catch problem. My understanding is that the fundamental problem lies with organo-chlorines which are apparently the main culprit and by-catch in fisheries is targeted as possibly an obstacle to recovery, but not the primary cause of the decline. The decline itself seems to me to be very much based on anecdotal commentary.

Q143 Chairman: With that in mind, what monitoring do your members do?

Mr Deas: Our members do not do any specific monitoring other than their perceptions. For what it is worth, our members say that their perception is that in recent years there are more porpoises than dolphins around than for some time in the past. We do not know what weight to put on that, whether they are seeing the whole population or part of the population. Cetaceans, like fish, are notoriously difficult to count. They pop up here, they pop up there, so is that the same pod, the same school that we saw half an hour ago? I think it is possible to treat percentage figures for by-catch population with a reasonable degree of scepticism which is not to say that there is not a problem, but to say that a sense of proportion in all of this is essential. We share the view that geographical location, seasonality, type of fishing, and the observer programmes suggest that for dolphins, the bass fishery is likely to be the main source of the carcasses that are washed up. It seems logical to us that in terms of the scale of the problem and the principal drive for solutions, that is where the principal focus of attention should lie. We are prepared to take a fairly firm line by saying that the technical solutions, the grids and the acoustic deterrent devices, should be given a period to work, but ultimately we cannot support a fishery that has a demonstrable adverse impact on cetaceans and, consequently, our public image as an industry.

Chairman: We will come on to pingers a little later.

Q144 Mr Breed: In the letter that you sent the Committee back in August, Mr Deas, you said, "It has been reasonably well established that a significant cause of mortality of dolphins in South Western approaches at certain times of the year is attributable to the bass pair trawl fleet". Now, there are other views as to what is the principal cause and everything else, but is there any evidence at all of common dolphins being caught in pelagic trawl fisheries other than the sea bass fishery, in other words, to give us some sort of context so as to see where the weight of evidence is?

Mr Deas: I think all the evidence is relatively circumstantial and I certainly do not have any definitive evidence to lay before you. You have to look at what fleets are working in the area at what times of the year, what kind of gear they are working and how that relates to dolphin patterns of behaviour, but we have nothing firmer than that.

Q145 Mr Breed: There is, I think, some other evidence which suggests that hake, tuna and horse-mackerel, at least in parts of the 1990s, were also responsible for at least some of the by-catch problems. Has that been your experience or that of your members?

Mr Deas: The clear line of demarcation is between the dolphin by-catch where there is a particular problem with the mobile trawl fishery, and the indications seem to point in that direction, and with harbour porpoises which is a rather different problem, and it is the set nets where there is a recognised, but small by-catch of porpoises and I have various things I would like to say about that. The way that the industry is organised, its primary focus of attention is catching fish and I would like to say some things later about monitoring programmes and how the industry could be co-opted into improving the database, but it is fairly sparse and circumstantial at the moment.

Q146 Mr Breed: You also go on to say that bass pair trawl fleets are primarily, although not exclusively, French. How many sort of non-UK vessels are engaged in the bass pair trawl fishery and how many are engaged in the sort of other pelagic trawl fisheries? Can you give us some sort of idea of the numbers?

Mr Deas: I can give you a very crude idea. I think there are something like 60 French vessels and a much smaller number of Dutch vessels, under ten, but they are large vessels.

Q147 Mr Breed: Are these ones working in pairs, so ten would be five pairs?

Mr Deas: The Dutch would not be, no. They would be large pelagic vessels. There are a number of Scottish pair teams, between two and six I think, that visit on occasions.

Q148 Mr Breed: So relatively small numbers then in that sense?

Mr Deas: Yes.

Q149 Mr Breed: Can you tell us in what ways some of these non-UK, these foreign vessels that are within UK waters, are monitored? Is there any evidence that there is monitoring being undertaken of their activities at all?

Mr Deas: There is monitoring in the sense that if they are operating within UK waters, they are being monitored in the same way as any other vessel would be.

Q150 Mr Breed: So where they are, not what they are catching?

Mr Deas: That is correct.

Q151 Mr Mitchell: I see that you say in the evidence that you are not opposed to a more restrictive approach up to and including a prohibition of this fishing method for bass, so you are prepared effectively to stop?

Mr Deas: Yes, I think where there is a demonstrable cetacean by-catch that is of a level that potentially affects the species as a whole, it is very difficult to defend and we would not try to defend it. What we would say is that every attempt should be made to find mitigation methods, but if they do not work we would not defend that particular fishery as an impetus to speed up the location of solutions.

Q152 Mr Breed: When you say that you are prepared to look at approaches up to and including prohibition, are you saying that as someone, like me, because it is a useful way of getting at foreigners or are you saying it out of a more altruistic concern for the environment and for the preservation of cetacean stocks?

Mr Deas: No, I do not think you have to dig as deep as altruism. It is self-interest because the fishing industry has not just to operate on a sustainable basis, but it has to be perceived. We are very sensitive to the industry's image and if there is a problem, we either have to deal with it or end that particular fishery. Now, we would very much prefer for it to be dealt with through mitigation measures, but our Executive Committee some time ago took the view that this was a problem on an apparent scale that really could not be defended and we were not prepared to defend it. The story is entirely different with harbour porpoises where I think there are solutions and the scale of the problem is not at the same level and we think there are ways forward there. It helps of course that we do not really have much of a direct interest in that fishery, so it is always easier to take the moral high ground, but there we are.

Q153 Mr Mitchell: That is a good answer, but it means you are saying that a more prevalent attitude among fishermen, which is, "This is just another bloody nuisance imposed on us by the increasing importance of conservation", is not the universal position and that your organisation takes a more responsible position.

Mr Deas: I think it is self-interest. It might be self-interest, you might say, in that this is not an issue that really we can ignore because it will come back and bite the industry in one way or another whether it is consumer resistance to fish or a more restrictive regime altogether, so we do take that responsibility seriously.

Q154 Mr Mitchell: Would we have power to stop, say, the pair trawling for bass?

Mr Deas: "We" being the UK?

Q155 Mr Mitchell: Yes.

Mr Deas: I think it would only make sense at the European level.

Q156 Mr Mitchell: Only Europe can do it?

Mr Deas: Well, I dare say that ----

Q157 Mr Mitchell: We cannot enforce a unilateral conservation order?

Mr Deas: I think realistically it has to be at the European level.

Q158 Mr Mitchell: What would the economic impact on fishermen be if, for instance, you had to adopt the universal use of pingers?

Mr Deas: I think I would like to say something just by way of preface which is that it is very important to appreciate that the figures that have been quoted in relation to by-catch in the porpoise fishery in the set nets, in particular the hake fishery of 6 per cent, that is a 1994 figure and since then there has been a very dramatic reduction in the size of the hake fleet from around 50 vessels down to about 12 so that in 2003, if you accept the original figure of 6 per cent, we are probably down at about 2 per cent. There has been a very significant reduction in the overall size of the fishery and, by implication, the size of any cetacean by-catch will have been reduced proportionately, so it is important to understand the reduction in the size of the fishery, but also to understand that dolphins are not caught in this fishery, but it is porpoises we are talking about. I think this is a general issue that goes beyond the south-west, that looking at 2002 and 2003 particularly there has been an enormous reduction in the size of the fleet through decommissioning programmes and through the sale of vessels. It is particularly true of the hake fishery, but it is also true in the North Sea and the wreck net fishery has been radically reduced partly through direct decommissioning, but also because under the impact of cod-recovery measures, it simply is not viable under the very restrictive regime that applies. On the economic impact, well, it all depends under what circumstances of course. Four thousand pounds per vessel has been quoted as an average, but of course the hake vessels are larger, carrying more nets than the average, so I would say we are talking about £7,000 there, plus the additional labour costs, so it is a very significant amount, especially against the background of very difficult economic conditions that the industry faces at the moment, so there is absolutely no question of being able to afford this without government support through FIFG presumably at the 100 per cent level. I think that has to be an absolute pre-condition. However, I think before we get to that stage, we need to ensure that any measures that are taken are targeted at the fisheries where there is a demonstrable problem. We must move away from this kind of blanket approach. The measures must be proportionate which I suppose is a different way of saying the same thing. As I have mentioned, there must be transitional financial support to allow the purchase of the equipment and I think, above anything else, it must make sense at vessel level. There are a number of outstanding practical problems associated with pingers that have not been resolved and it is very important before we rush ahead under the glare of the media spotlight just to be seen to be doing something, and we have all been there before. You could say that a large part of the Common Fisheries Policy and certainly the recovery programmes for cod and hake are there to be seen to be doing something, but that is very different from having a positive impact, so it is extremely important that the measures make sense at vessel level not just in terms of a regulation or a bit of paper or a strategy document. It must make sense at vessel level and that means overcoming the practical problems in specific fisheries, such as whether this equipment works at this depth under these conditions with this machinery. I think that has to be the starting point.

Q159 Mr Mitchell: And always with that proviso that if it is going to be imposed on vessels by government, it should be paid for by government?

Mr Deas: That is right.

Q160 Mr Mitchell: Let's move on to observers because Defra thinks that the effectiveness of pingers is best monitored by independent observers on board. They want it to be optional, on a voluntary basis initially. Are there practical problems in operating such a scheme even on a voluntary basis?

Mr Deas: Well, the first thing to say is that our constituent organisation, the Cornish Fish Producers' Organisation, has worked on a voluntary basis with the Sea Mammal Research Unit and other conservationists to resolve and reduce the by-catch problem in the hake fishery since the early 1990s and that has produced useful information and a collaborative approach in finding ways to reduce the problem. I think that 100 per cent observer coverage may look good to the zealots, but I think there are lots of practical problems in finding people that are capable of doing the job and are willing to stay out there. Observers might be willing to go out for one or two days, but to go out for a week at a time, there are serious issues. Then apart from the question of who would do it, who would pay? As I say, the length of the trip has been a major problem, so I think again the regulatory approach 100 per cent may look good on paper, but I do not think it is a practical solution. We would much prefer to work and develop the collaborative approach to recognise that where there is a problem, it is dealt with, but jointly with the industry and the principal conservation bodies.

Q161 Mr Mitchell: And you would prefer that on a voluntary basis?

Mr Deas: Absolutely.

Q162 Mr Mitchell: Rather than a legal requirement?

Mr Deas: I do not think a legal requirement. Again it gets back to this issue of something that looks good on a bit of paper, but when you look at the practical realities of implementing such an approach, it dissolves and in the meantime you have alienated the industry and that is not helpful. I think we need to work together jointly to find solutions.

Q163 Mr Drew: If we look at the idea of stewards, where did this come from? Did this come from the industry or did it come from NGOs or did it come from the Government or the EU?

Mr Deas: I do not think it has come from the government level. I am not certain where the original idea comes from, but it does seem to fit the bill. I suppose that perhaps the most obvious parallel is in agriculture where you have Sites of Special Scientific Interest and landowners are paid to play a stewardship role. There does seem to be a great disparity between the way that agriculture is treated and the marine environment is treated. It seems to us that fishing vessel owners and operators can play a very valuable role. Each fishing vessel is potentially a research platform gathering information and we would like it very much on fish stocks, but I see no reason why that should not be extended to cetaceans. Again it is part of this collaborative approach and we are indeed working at the moment with CFAS on a collaborative approach, a partnership approach to issues relating to commercial fish stocks, but there is no reason why that should not be extended to cover by-catch, and the kind of question that was asked by the Chairman earlier about what sort of monitoring the industry does, we could put a more positive response to that.

Q164 Mr Drew: Can you, therefore, try and explain to me what sort of incentives or what sort of encouragement would you expect to be put in place for people who, with the best will in the world, want to catch fish? There are two issues there. There is the issue of what you pay them and what you pay them for and, secondly, what level of training and new aspirations would people be required to undertake to make this a reality?

Mr Deas: I do not think it makes sense to see this as a quick fix and I do not think that it can be seen in isolation from a broader change to the way that data on the marine environment and on fish stocks is collated, but we have at the moment a fairly secretive, elitist, closed world in which the scientific bodies hold the information very close to themselves. We would want to move to a more open system in which the industry is involved at every level, collecting the data, interpreting the data and developing joint solutions and I would see the cetacean issue as part of that broad approach, but I do not think it is a quick fix. A start has been made, as I say, this year and £1 million has been used to develop a partnership approach and it has, I think, so far proved to be very successful, but it is something that we would have to develop and expand in the future.

Q165 Mr Drew: They are nice words and I know from having interviewed you before that you are very diplomatic, but to go back to my first question, what are the incentives? This is money?

Mr Deas: Yes.

Q166 Mr Drew: What sort of money would a trawler captain require to be undertaking what could be quite an interesting, but quite a laborious activity actually to look at the scientific rationale for what is being caught, what should not be caught and so on? What is the money in this?

Mr Deas: Well, I cannot give you a fixed amount.

Q167 Mr Drew: I am not asking for a figure, but just a feel.

Mr Deas: This kind of idea would have to be related to the size of vessel and the tasks involved. The way that it has worked at the moment is that it is very difficult to give you a straight answer because the tasks vary.

Q168 Mr Drew: But have you any idea? Have they given you any figures where they said, "Barrie, you tell us what you expect and we will make it worth your while"?

Mr Deas: Well, I can give you an example of how it works at the moment which is that if the vessels are undertaking specific research trips, it is based on average earnings from fishing, so it has to be related to what they would earn fishing if you are talking about a designated trip, but if you are talking about a commercial fishing trip on which data is gathered while they are fishing, then that is a different story. Obviously we are talking about much lesser sums because you are not diverting all your time, so I think there is probably a scale of rates depending on how much you are deflected from your normal fishing operations.

Q169 Mr Drew: And that would be per vessel?

Mr Deas: Per vessel.

Q170 Mr Drew: You would have to do it like that?

Mr Deas: On a vessel basis, yes.

Q171 Mr Drew: You could not sort of sign up to an area or whatever as that would be meaningless?

Mr Deas: Well, you could. The way to do it would be to co-opt the local organisations and work out a schedule of which vessels are going to be doing the work and under what circumstances.

Q172 Mr Drew: Now, if we can go on to aspects of mitigation, there is this notion that we have now got, and I find it difficult to describe it, the supra-net, which I thought was something to do with IT, but we are on to the supra-net here where we have got fish that will stay within the net, but the dolphins and porpoises will be able to work their way out. Where are we on this? Can you try and give us a feel for the technical side of it and then I might be able to see whether I can get my mind around how the logic of the economics and the marine science locks into place?

Mr Deas: I am not with you at all on the idea of a supra-net. It usually refers to a very large towed net and jumbo jets always come into it somehow. There are in the bass fishery, if we are talking about that, large nets. If we are talking about fixed nets ----

Q173 Mr Drew: This is what is technically called a 'cetacean-friendly gill net'.

Mr Deas: Well, we are talking about nets where, as I understand it, the mesh, the twine size would be of a size that would hold commercial fish species, but would break with larger mammals such as cetaceans and I have really got no information particularly on that.

Q174 Mr Drew: You are maybe feeling the same as me, that if a dolphin breaks out, I think the fish might be tempted to follow it unless he has had a word with them in advance to help them.

Mr Deas: I would have to be convinced that under practical conditions that would be a runner. I am happy to be convinced, but I have not seen anything so far.

Q175 Mr Drew: So you do not know of any particular trials or anything that has been going on out at sea?

Mr Deas: No. The most likely candidate for a practical, cost-effective mitigation device is the acoustic pinger.

Q176 Mr Drew: And this is an alternative because people do not like it.

Mr Deas: Well, there are a range of practical problems associated with the pingers and whether it is a long-term solution because of the habituation of the porpoise to the noise or whatever, there are real issues that have to be addressed, but it does seem to offer a reasonable way forward better than anything else I have seen and again against a background of a declining problem, particularly with reference to the hake fishery.

Q177 Mr Drew: Just as a final point, when we started this inquiry we were shown graphic pictures, I have to say historical pictures, of dolphins and porpoises being brought on shore. What is your feel for the individual vessels now? There clearly is an attempt to reduce this and, as you say, it seems to be a reducing problem, so I am interested in how you know that. Also what sort of measures are individual trawler skippers actually trying to take to make this a reducing problem?

Mr Deas: Your choice of language, I think, indicates that you are conflating the two fisheries and the two problems. There is the mobile trawl fishery which is a problem for dolphins and I think remains a problem. Then there is the set net, the gill net issue in relation to harbour porpoise and there it is a reducing problem and my evidence for saying that is two-fold. Firstly, the UK fleet that prosecutes that fishery is reduced from 50 vessels to 12, so you can, therefore, assume that the by-catch is reduced proportionately. Secondly, there does seem to be a prospect of addressing the problems in that particular fishery through mitigation measures, particularly the pingers, and there does seem to be a way forward there.

Q178 Mr Drew: So are you saying that really we ought to be concentrating on the dolphins?

Mr Deas: Absolutely. That is the first point we would want to make, yes.

Q179 Alan Simpson: I was just intrigued by David's question about, "Give us a price. What would it take?" It sounds like the Whips' Office! Would you just accept that there is another side of the questioning line that David Drew has been pursuing with you about the maintenance of fish stocks, namely that in addition to asking you, "What would it take for you to do the things we would like you to do?", we can also pursue a line that says, "What would we need to put in place to stop you doing the things we do not want you to do?" In that context, would you just tell us what your position is in relation to the suggestions that we should impose quotas, particularly on the pelagic sea bass fishery?

Mr Deas: It is relatively easy for me to answer that question because we do not have a huge interest in that fishery ourselves. If quotas were introduced, I suppose the largest share would go to the French because they have got the largest historical participation in that fishery, but I think the fundamental point is that I do not think there would be a single thing for dolphins caught in that fishery. TACs, total allowable catches, and quotas have not been notably successful since they were introduced. They are quite a convenient way of sharing a scarce resource between different Member States and different groups of fishermen, but they are not notably successful in terms of conservation and they would be even more blunt, I think, in terms of doing anything about the cetacean by-catch, so although we would not have a problem about it because we would not necessarily be affected, I do not think it is a solution to the problem.

Q180 Alan Simpson: In relation then to the cetacean by-catch, would quotas on any other part of the fishery be more effective?

Mr Deas: No, I do not think so.

Q181 Alan Simpson: So you do not see quotas as the answer at all?

Mr Deas: I do not think quotas are a solution to the by-catch issue, no.

Q182 Alan Simpson: So you do not see quotas as a solution, you do not see the gill nets as a solution, but would you see licensing of the vessels as a more effective way of dealing with this?

Mr Deas: In relation to the porpoise issue, all of those vessels are licensed under the UK fishing vessel licensing scheme, so we already have a very restrictive licensing regime and through the combination of the licensing system and the quota management system, the vessels that are in that fishery are the vessels that are in that fishery and they are not likely to expand. As I said earlier, the trend has been very steeply downwards since the early 1990s from 50 vessels down to about 12. In relation to the dolphin fishery, the issue is how many vessels are in that fishery. If you are looking to reduce the by-catch, obviously a reduction in the number of vessels would achieve that, but that is not a UK area of purview, it is not a UK jurisdiction and that would have to be done by the French or at EU level if the EU were to introduce a permit scheme or something like that on the basis of by-catch.

Q183 Alan Simpson: I was not necessarily asking who should do it, but whether you thought that this was a do-able idea and that it would deliver. The reason for asking that is that the Scottish Pelagic Fishermen's Association specifically made this as a recommendation, that restricting the number of vessels that were entitled to fish and restricting it to those with a proven track record of prosecuting the fishery was their view of an effective way of dealing with and limiting the issues of by-catch, so I just really was trying to sound you out on that.

Mr Deas: There are two aspects. A licensing system based on historical performance would prevent an expansion of the fishery. Whether the number of licences would come down would be the issue and how that would be achieved if your purpose is to reduce cetacean by-catch. There would have to be a reduction in the number of licences, not just freezing it at current levels.

Q184 Chairman: As someone who spends her entire life allegedly on a diet, size is quite important. You talk about the vessels being reduced from 50 to 12, but are the 12 vessels that are left in the fishery larger than the 50 that were originally in the fisher?

Mr Deas: No, there has not been a noticeable increase in size. I cannot swear that for every single vessel, but there has not been a reduction in the size of the fleet countered by an increase in the size of individual vessels, no, certainly not.

Q185 Mr Mitchell: They have in the purse-seine tuna fishery in the eastern Pacific a mortality limit. In other words, if you catch and kill so many in relation to the catch you are making, the fishery is closed off and the vessel cannot fish anymore. Defra seems to think that we should consider whether any UK fishery should be subject to a cetacean mortality limit. What would your reaction be to that?

Mr Deas: Well, you are moving towards some kind of targeting there which makes some sense. If there is a problem, as I said right at the outset, we need to deal with that problem, but not in an indiscriminate, disproportionate way and the example that you give there is an example of targeted measures. If you have got a problem in a particular area with a particular fleet category, then deal with it in that way. I think that would be my general response.

Q186 Mr Mitchell: But you would not be in favour of it as a universal rule so that if a vessel catches more than the limit, it stops fishing or that branch of fishing is closed down either permanently or temporarily?

Mr Deas: Enforcement is an issue, let's be honest, of that kind of rule, so I would prefer to work towards a more collaborative approach where we have good information on precisely the scale of the problem. The difficulty with that is that unless you have an observer on every vessel, which raises all these questions about who is going to pay for it and who is going to do it, you do have an enforcement dimension there. The Cornish example, going right back to the early 1990s, is, I think, one that should not be dismissed where you have recognition of a problem and the industry working with the conservationists to find ways of reducing that problem. I think that is the model that we would want to stress in relation to that particular fishery.

Q187 Mr Mitchell: In the targeting scheme as we are moving towards it, is there a danger that fishermen will regard this not as a figure to come down from, catching less, but as precisely that, a target which they are permitted to take?

Mr Deas: I do not really have that much information or knowledge of the eastern Pacific, but I think that one of the problems is that the by-catch problem is not regular. It is sporadic. It is not even seasonal. From my understanding, you can go for years without having a by-catch problem and then there is a lot in one particular place and that kind of approach that you suggest would be a problem within that kind of scenario, I think.

Chairman: Well, Mr Deas, thank you very much indeed. We will be considering probably at the end of this session and reporting probably in the New Year. If, in the interim, there are issues which arise which you think your members or yourself would wish the Committee to take into account, please feel free to contact us. Thank you very much for giving evidence this afternoon.

Memorandum submitted by Brixham Seawatch

Examination of Witness

Witness: MS LINDA HINGLEY, Brixham Seawatch, examined.

Q188 Chairman: Good afternoon.

Ms Hingley: Do you want me to start with a brief statement about what I do or do you want to start straight as you did with the other gentleman?

Q189 Chairman: I think we would probably like to ask questions and if at the end there is something critical that you think we have not covered, then feel free to mention it.

Ms Hingley: As you know, it is a huge issue and I am very passionate about it.

Q190 Chairman: Well, I would try and contain that. Welcome to the Committee. You know the purpose of our session.

Ms Hingley: Yes, and thank you for allowing me to come.

Q191 Chairman: You have give us written evidence for which we thank you. Can you tell the Committee what the evidence is this year for what is happening on Devon's beaches and I do not know if you know for Cornwall as well, and why is it that it is dolphins that you find and not the porpoises?

Ms Hingley: Well, I just cleared a dead dolphin yesterday off a Devon beach. The autumn ones have already started. As you know, this year is the worst year on record for Devon and Cornwall beaches. The main dolphins that I clear are common dolphins and they are seasonal. It is only in the winter months that I get common dolphins washed ashore and we know virtually how they are being killed now and I do not think there is any argument about that. It is the pelagic fishery in particular, the bass pair trawlers that are definitely killing the common dolphin and this is proven from the post mortem reports and from the observer scheme that Defra ran three years ago. I also get porpoises. Interestingly, the porpoises that I get are not seasonal, but they are all year round and they do correspond with neaps, neap tides. As you know, you get high tides and low tides and neap tides are when the tide is at its lowest and that is interesting because that is actually when a lot of the set netters are working. They actually have to work neaps and not the tops of the tides, as they call it, so it is very interesting that when I do get porpoises wash in, it does correspond to the fishery that we know would have a problem with them.

Q192 Chairman: And are they autopsied?

Ms Hingley: They are autopsied, yes. Interestingly, and I am going to be absolutely straight on this, some of the porpoises that we send off for post mortem have died of natural causes, but most of the porpoises that we send off are actually by-catch and are proven to be by-catch, but we do get porpoises occasionally that have high worm burdens, worm infestations, and we get them with secondary pneumonia. Porpoises, as you know, are the smallest cetacean in our waters and they do have a real problem with pollution. Their nature of feeding is that they are bottom feeders, so they are very different from dolphins. They are bottom feeders, so they dig in the sand and the mud and they do pick up a lot more pollutants and things that are around in the river estuaries which is where they feed, so to be absolutely fair, you do get sick porpoises occasionally, but you would never get sick common dolphins. All the common dolphins that I send off are so healthy I cannot tell you.

Q193 Mr Lazarowicz: Why is the pelagic sea bass fishery particularly prone to common dolphin by-catch, do you think?

Ms Hingley: I do not know if you have had a look at the evidence that I put in, but I did actually say the reasons why the bass pair trawl fishery is particularly devastating to common dolphins. First and foremost, it is a massive trawl, it is a huge trawl, it really is. Secondly, it is pulled very fast through the water at about eight knots, which is not very fast for a dolphin, but very fast if you have got a huge trawl and a dolphin swimming into it going the other way. Thirdly, and this is very important, they are towed for very long periods of time and we are talking about from dawn till dusk, sometimes eight to ten hours, and there are very few fisheries that have their gear in the water for that length of time. For example, the pelagic fishery, which we know can catch and kill dolphins, I know pelagic fishermen and if they are targeting sprats or mackerel, their gear sometimes is only in the water - this is a pelagic single trawl - for 10 or 20 minutes. These boats are highly sophisticated. They do not want to waste time finding fish. What they do is they go out there, they find the shoal of fish on their fish-finding apparatus and they zap it, so, in other words, your gear is only in the water for a short period of time. If dolphins are around in that short period of time, yes, they could be caught and killed, but the chances are that the dolphins have more of a chance of escape. If you have got a massive fin going through the water at quite a high speed, eight to ten knots, for ten hours and you have got the opening, which I put in my evidence, which can be from the surface to the bottom of the sea, nothing is going to stand a chance, nothing

Q194 Mr Lazarowicz: I think you advocate suspending the fishery ----

Ms Hingley: Yes, I would love to see it banned, yes.

Q195 Mr Lazarowicz: ---- until a method for preventing the by-catch can be found?

Ms Hingley: Yes.

Q196 Mr Lazarowicz: Do you think there are methods which can be worked out to prevent this by-catch?

Ms Hingley: No, I do not. I do not know what method you could use. With the Scottish bass pair trawls, they are so huge and they are devastating. They have done so much damage to the common dolphins in the English Channel over the last 10 or 15 years. Defra's own figures are so damning on this, I do not see how we can see these dead bodies washing in, and I just do not think there is anywhere to go on this. I think we have to ban it. What I would have loved to have done is to have banned it for one season, just suppose we banned it for one season, and see what is washing up in Devon and Cornwall. Let's just see. Ban it for one season and let's just see what we have washing up on our beaches.

Q197 Mr Lazarowicz: But if your supposition was correct, the logical conclusion to your position would be that the fishery would be closed, not suspended, and closed indefinitely. Is that not correct?

Ms Hingley: Yes, and I would like to say that I speak as a person from the fishing industry. As you know, I have been involved with the fishing industry for 25 years when I married a fisherman 25 years ago. For 12 years I have been a part-owner of a beam trawler. My whole income is derived from the fishing industry. I have nothing to gain from banning the bass pair trawl fishery because our boat does not really catch very much bass at all and we do not target bass. A beam trawler is for flat fish, it is on the bottom and we target bottom fish. I can honestly tell you that the only reason I got involved with what I am involved with now is because I was devastated to find out how much damage is going on in an industry that I actually love, respect and admire. I am afraid this is an industry which is a wonderful industry which has been hideously mis-managed, it is motivated by total greed and it needs a complete clean-up. I am afraid there are ways to catch bass which do not kill dolphins and those are what we should be looking at. This is an industry which was banned in America six years ago on conservation grounds totally and I was not aware that the Americans have got a tremendously good eco-friendly record. I think the only way to approach the bass pair trawl fishery in the English Channel is to ban it until we know that we have got absolute categoric proof of designs or mitigation methods that are going to protect dolphins. There is no other way out of this. Let me just say, there is one thing that you could do, and I have spoken to a lot of fishermen about this. I have said, "What would you do?", and they have said, "Well, there is evidence to show", and the Defra observers proved this, "that smaller pair trawlers do not catch dolphins". The gear is much smaller, the trawls are much smaller, so if you are going to tinker with the fishing industry, and you cannot tinker with the fishing industry, as you know, because how do you tell a bloke who has a 1,200 horsepower boat to suddenly go out, flog it and buy one that is 300 horsepower, it is like dis-inventing the wheel, but small is beautiful, I am afraid, and I am afraid that in this particular issue there is evidence that shows that smaller horsepower does not catch dolphins purely because the gear is so much smaller. In other words, if you had two boats that were 300 horsepower towing a trawl, it would be much, much smaller and it would have to be. Do you get my drift? It is 600 horsepower in total. The boats that are working off Start Point, which is the area off Devon where all of these dolphins are washing in that I deal with at the moment, they are massive. They are 1,200 or 1,500 horsepower, 2,000 horsepower, so those two combined, that is the power. It is power, pure power that is pulling that amount of gear through the water.

Q198 Mr Lazarowicz: If the measures that you want to see put in place were taken, would there not be calls from the industry for government compensation?

Ms Hingley: Yes, there would have to be, I am afraid, yes. I would not like to talk about that because I think you need to ask your fisheries representatives about that.

Q199 Mr Lazarowicz: But if this activity is so morally reprehensible, why should the Government, why should the public purse compensate people for this?

Ms Hingley: Well, that is a good point. There is one point I would like to make. As you know, the common dolphins are killed in the main, we think, by the bass pair trawlers. As you know, the bass pair trawlers only work in the English Channel in the winter months and the season is actually quite small. They have started working now, but the actual bass season is only from the 1^st January to 30^th March, so we are only talking about three months. Now, these trawlers are actually working elsewhere for the rest of the year and they are doing other fisheries, so in actual fact they are not totally reliant on this fishery for all of their income as they do other things as well. I suggest they go back and they do their other things. That is what I suggest they do.

Q200 Mr Mitchell: Do you want to ban the bass pair trawlers?

Ms Hingley: Yes. Barrie spoke about targets; I do not agree with targets. One dolphin killed by a trawler is one too many. I hate to talk about dolphins in the same way that you talk about fish quotas, but you have to look at by-catch on a sliding scale. We are talking about porpoises being caught in set nets. That is a completely different problem to common dolphins and pilot whales being caught in these big pelagic nets. Nobody is perfect, we do not live in an ideal word, so I think what we will have to do is we will have to decide what is the biggest problem and deal with the biggest problem first and then work our way down. In order to do a proper clean-up job we have got to target the biggest offender first and I am absolutely certain that the biggest offender is the bass pair trawlers. I cannot tell you how much effort and work and trouble I have put into this. I would love to be able to see ways that these guys could keep fishing and save the dolphins. I do not enjoy doing what I do. I am not a charity, I fund myself. I would love to move on and get a life and do something else, I can assure you. This is such a big problem now that it needs addressing and basically it is not being addressed. The fishermen are not going to address it. Let us be honest about it, fishing is a tough game, fishermen are tough people and I respect them because they are tough. They are a special breed but they are also the biggest rogues going. They are out there to make a buck. It is a tough world out there. We cannot expect these guys to turn into saints. They are not going to suddenly start telling you, "Oh, yes, I really care about dolphins. I really want to do this." I am talking as a fisherman's wife and I know the only way to make fishermen do anything is to say you are going to do this, you are not going to like it but you are going to do it because you have to, because too many dolphins are dying. They will accept that. They are tough enough to take it.

Q201 Mr Mitchell: What you are saying contradicts what the previous witness was saying, which is it is a matter of responsibility and not putting a bad image on the occupation, but they should do something about it.

Ms Hingley: Barrie touched on a point which I think is very important. I am sure none of the Committee here is probably aware that there is actually a European Commission statute which was made quite a long time ago, not on conservation grounds but on fisheries grounds, that fishermen are duty bound to report any cetacean by-catch. This has never been followed up. It is a classic case of one of these laws that is made that nobody is going to take notice of. Do you honestly think a fisherman is going to phone you up and tell you he has caught 50 dolphins?

Q202 Mr Mitchell: Why are your figures for the proportion killed as by-catches so much higher than those from Defra?

Ms Hingley: I do not know where Defra get their figures from, but I talk to fishermen. I started a sighting scheme. You touched on fishermen actually reporting live dolphins, we had a monitoring scheme about what is around our waters. One of the things I did when I first set up the little organisation 12 years ago was a monitoring scheme with my fishermen friends and that was very interesting and I still get a lot of information from the fishermen, but I get a lot of information from fishermen who tell me what is down on the bottom, which never washes in and that is a very pertinent point. The figures that are compiled by Defra and the Natural History Museum are only the tip of the iceberg, they are only about what washes in on the beaches. I only see the tip of the iceberg.

Q203 Mr Mitchell: So your figures are more accurate than theirs?

Ms Hingley: I feel so for two reasons. One, because I come from within the fishing industry and I am party to information about what is actually on the bottom of the sea, what fishermen trawl up in their nets that is dead and rotting; and secondly, because I obviously deal with it first-hand, I go out on the beaches, I drag these animals up, I get them off the post-mortem, I see the damage to them, I talk to fishermen, I know where the boats are working and I keep a very close eye. I have had a whole load of dolphins in in the last week in South Hams in Devon and I have actually made it my business to find out where the pair trawlers are working; they are working off Start Point. We have had south-westerlies for the last week and that is why they have come in where they have. You do not have to be very clever to do this.

Q204 Mr Mitchell: You have to be very political to get it stopped. The argument there will be that this is a European responsibility which our Government cannot do much about. There has been an overwhelming desire for a ban on industrial fishing. The British Government says it wants industrial fishing banned but it cannot do anything about it because it has to come to a deal with the Danish Government who does want industrial fishing to go on and so get other catches reduced. The same thing is going to arise with a ban on bass pair trawling because it is primarily a French interest and the French really are not open to influence and they are very intransient when it comes to defending their interests. That is a real difficulty which you have got it face. How do you propose to face it?

Ms Hingley: That is your job. I am not an MP and I do not want to be an MP. I just want to get on with my life and save dolphins. You understand the machinations of the European Union, I do not. All I can tell you is please stop it now because we are about ten years too late for these animals. We have very few common dolphins around. Defra will tell you this year they have not caught very many and that is because there is none left. Do we wait until we have wiped out huge populations? We are wiping out the breeding males, the alpha males, the alpha females. They are healthy, their bodies are in such good condition. We are not taking the sickly ones or the young ones or the old ones, we are taking out the breeding population. We do not know what damage we are doing. We do not really know what the population is because it is transient. We know they only come into the English Channel to feed in the winter months, as they have done since time immemorial. I can tell you that since I have been involved in what I am doing I have seen so much devastation, so I am absolutely and utterly converted to a ban on certainly the bass pair trawling. I can assure you, I have nothing to gain from this in any way whatsoever, this is my personal belief.

Q205 Mr Mitchell: Touché about our responsibility, that is absolutely right.

Ms Hingley: I am here today to tell you what I believe to be going on. Certainly some of the things I can prove, some of the things are my own belief, but I do not want to do your job. Your job is to stop it in any way possible. The British Government could ban the Scotsmen. We have got about four pairs working over Scotland. Now, I know there would be uproar and, quite fairly, the Scotsmen would have a point, they would say "How can you ban us when the French are carrying on?" Interestingly, the Scottish pair teams are bigger, their gear is bigger than the French. I am not saying they kill more dolphins, they do not. We have these dolphins washing up on French beaches that never make a line in a newspaper. They had 800 dolphins washed up in a weekend last winter on French beaches but it never even made the news. I have only dealt with six in the last week and you might say "So what, Linda?". I am not trying to take away from the French problem, all I am saying is the Scotsmen's trawls are much bigger and their boats are much bigger. I have always said that one Scottish pair team equals about three or four French teams because their gear is smaller and they work it slightly different. Obviously we cannot catch more. Every time a pair team catches dolphins they do not catch one or two, they catch 25, 30, because the animals always feed in large groups, they have to chase their shoaling fish to feed. They are not like porpoises that can live on their own and feed off the bottom, dolphins are interesting, they have to live in large family supported groups and they feed by chasing shoaling fish at speed and they need the whole family around them to chase the fish into a pack and to feed off it. You cannot catch two dolphins in this way, you are going to decimate 20, 30 or 50 and Defra's figures prove that, do not take my word for it.

Q206 Mr Mitchell: Let us move on to separator grids because Defra argues that they have been successful at deploying it on an experimental basis in New Zealand and Tasmania, although you are less happy. Where did you get your information from Defra's recent trials?

Ms Hingley: I have a friend in New Zealand who has looked into the New Zealand trials for me and she gave me the information on the New Zealand trials. The New Zealand trials, first and foremost, were not for dolphins, they were for sea lions. The second thing is that the trawls were much smaller. The problem we have with these big trawls is the dolphins do not realise they are in the big trawls. In order to tow the big trawl you have to cut down water pressure. That is one of the problems with these big trawls, the dolphins swim in and they do not feel the change in water pressure on their body, they do not realise they are in a trawl at all. They waste valuable time swimming around feeding on fish that is in the trawl not realising that they are caught. First and foremost, the New Zealand trial was done on a much smaller trawl and if that trawl was going to work it would have worked in New Zealand. Let us face it, if you are going to find your way out of a trawl, it is easier to find your way out of a smaller trawl than a bigger trawl. Secondly, sea lions are much smaller and more agile than dolphins, they are really slippery creatures. The trial proved that too many see lions were injured and went through those separator grids and they were filming what went through the separator grid. I would love Defra's design to have worked. I cannot think of anything better than us here discussing a trawl design that is going to work. First and foremost, they did not have a camera filming what went through the separator grids and that is vital. How do they know it was a success if they do not know what went in and out? Secondly, they did not start the trial until the end of March or the beginning April. As I have just told you, the bass season starts on first January and finishes at the end of March. I can tell you quite categorically that quite often the bass is being so heavily hit that there is not much bass left around mid-March. Often the Scotsmen go back to Scotland because it is not worth being here if you are not catching anything.

Q207 Mr Mitchell: Would it not be better to use some kind of mitigation device like the separator grid than not use any at all?

Ms Hingley: Yes, I see your point. Why are we tinkering with things? If you are going to do research, you either do it properly or not at all. It is like me running a survey on snow in the middle of June. You should do the survey at the height of the season. They should have been doing that survey in January when the boats started bass pair trawling. They should have had a camera fitted to watch everything that went out of that separator grid. I would love to sit here and say, "It worked, how brilliant, how wonderful," but I am not going to support research that is totally unscientific. Secondly, while we are tinkering another year has gone by and I am dragging dead dolphins off beaches in Devon that have suffered. This is the point I want to make that nobody makes, these animals suffer terribly. If this was happening on land, if farmers were saying they could not afford to send their sheep off to the abattoir so they will just slowly strangle them in the fields over a period of 20 minutes they would be imprisoned. These dolphins die a terrible, torturous death. They are exactly the same as you and I. I have seen them post-mortem, I have seen them opened up and when you look inside the dolphin it is exactly the same as a male or female of our species. We know they are highly intelligent, sentient mammals. It takes them 20 minutes to die with all their body organs rupturing. I am not kidding, they struggle so much they rupture their own muscles. You imagine struggling so hard you break your own neck. You imagine struggling so hard you break your own pelvis, imagine the agony. The only thing you can think of is getting out of what you are trapped in and all your family members are calling and panicking around you. How dare we put these animals through this in the name of money and in the name of buying up bass - which, incidentally, is my favourite fish, it is a lovely fish, I want to carry on eating bass. Does anybody here want to eat bass that has rolled around in a trawl with a dead dolphin? I do not think so. There are ways to catch bass that does not kill dolphins. What are we doing putting money into supporting an industry which is devastating these creatures? They do not die quickly, it is a lingering, suffering, terrible death and that is it as far as I am concerned. I do not want to talk about targets, it is the suffering and the scale of the dolphins that are dying that is important. I cannot tell you any more.

Mr Mitchell: That was very powerful evidence. I can see now why so many MPs spoke so highly of you and said we must hear you. It has been a real pleasure. Thank you.

Q208 Chairman: I would like to echo that. I think you should think about being a Member of Parliament. If this is your first appearance before a Select Committee, I wish those who came more frequently to give evidence gave it with so much passion and authority. Thank you very much for your evidence today.

Ms Hingley: May I just show you some photographs?

Q209 Chairman: Yes.

Ms Hingley: I will be very quick. I brought some photos along today to show you the injuries to the animals that I deal with. You can see the lacerations to the body. The beaks are always very badly broken or damaged. I want you to take this one away with you and remember this one when you are tired and you do not feel like doing anything and you have loads of other things to be dealing with. This is a common dolphin - all these are post-mortem by the way - which was proven to have died in a trawl, you can see the classic damage to the beak, to the pectorals, to the dorsal. This one was heavily pregnant and she also was lactating, so she would have had a calf. The calf would have gone away, if it was not killed in the trawl with her, and starved to death. This is how I often find them washed up, hand on heart, I have not touched them in any way. They catch so many, they tie them together to get them over the sides of the boat and sometimes they are tied in twos or threes together with ropes still around their tails, they do not even bother to take the rope off. How damning is that? Lastly, this is what they do to them when they want to get rid of them and they do not want us to find them, they chop them into bits, but because the sea is such a wonderful place it throws up all its secrets and this is what we find, heads, tails, bodies, torsos. Imagine if your children or your grandchildren were finding those and they asked who did it and you said the fishermen, it is just not good enough.

Chairman: Austin says "the French" but we will not go there! Thank you for your co-operation and passion. We very much hear what you are saying. Thank you.

Memorandum submitted by Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

Examination of Witnesses

Witnesses: MR BEN BRADSHAW, a Member of the House, Minister for Nature Conservation and Fisheries, MR MARTIN CAPSTICK, Head of the European Wildlife Division, MR COLIN PENNY, Head of the Sea Fisheries Conservation Branch, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, examined.

Q210 Chairman: Minister, welcome. As you know, we are conducting an inquiry into cetacean by-catch and as a Devon Member of Parliament I am sure you know from your post bag and your involvement in the community exactly how important this is in the West Country. We have just had an incredibly passionate presentation from Ms Hingley and prior to that the Sea Fisheries Committee. We welcome you today. Would you be kind enough to introduce your officials to us?

Mr Bradshaw: Martin Capstick, on my right, is from our Wildlife Division, and Colin Penny is from our Fisheries Division.

Q211 Chairman: Welcome to you all. Can you give us an estimate of the current status of the by-catch response strategy which was published in March this year? How is it going?

Mr Bradshaw: We think it is going very well. We are hoping to move forward with practical, concrete proposals in the New Year. The response has been very helpful to us. It has been informed, as you may already have been told, by some very interesting research that we have carried out with the Sea Mammal Research Unit from St Andrew's University in the last bass fisheries season and which is resuming this very week in the bass fishery off the south-west.

Q212 Chairman: So there will be changes to the strategy as a result of the review or the consultation?

Mr Bradshaw: There will certainly be changes to our policy. We are already changing the policy as a result of what we are discovering all the time. I think it is probably worth putting on the record that the United Kingdom has led in the field of both raising concern about and implementing policies aimed at tackling the problem of cetacean by-catch not just in the European Union but in the world. The Agreement on the Conservation of Small Cetaceans of the Baltic of North Seas was driven by the UK. The new proposals that are coming out from the European Commission to help tackle this problem are again as a result of pressure from the United Kingdom. We are in the forefront of both the research and action to tackle the problem of cetacean by-catch and the more we find out about it the more we are prepared to do. We have already, since our strategy was published earlier this year, decided to resume the trials that I have just talked about off the south-west coast because they proved to be so successful this season and we wanted to see if we could make them even more successful in the next so that we have evidence to take to other countries to encourage them to tackle the problem in the same way as we are doing.

Q213 Chairman: So there is a timetable on implementing the strategy, is there? I know you have said you are doing work already off the south-west coast.

Mr Bradshaw: We will implement whatever measures unilaterally that we think can be helpful, we are not going to wait for other countries to do this, but at the same time we recognise that without concerted international action and in our case at a European Union level whatever we do is only going to be a very small contribution. As I was waiting to come in one of your members raised the problem of the French bass fishery. To put this into context, we have two or four pair trawlers, at most, involved in our bass fishery off the south-west compared with 30 French. As you may also be aware, while the terrible and distressing problem, quite rightly, highlighted by Linda a few minutes ago of cetacean catch is very high profile in this country and is taken very seriously, it hardly registers on the radar across the Channel. When my French colleague was asked about it recently he said he was not even aware it existed. I know that some of the non-governmental organisations like Greenpeace are trying to raise the profile of this problem across the Channel, but a unilateral action would be helpful insofar as it goes, but until we can persuade our fellow European countries - and the Commission is making progress on this, coming up with its own proposals - the problem is not going to be solved by us alone.

Q214 Chairman: I do not think there will be any disagreement about that, but when do you think the Commission is going to enact its strategy?

Mr Bradshaw: I do not think I would be wise to put a date on that. The Commission will try to move the matter forward as quickly as it can get agreement among Member States. Fisheries is an EU competence, decisions are determined on Qualified Majority Voting and I think, to be realistic about it, a great deal more work still needs to be done on some of the other Member States for whom this is not such a serious issue, if they recognise it as an issue at all. I would urge a lot of those organisations and individuals who do a great deal of very good campaigning in this country and who have helped raise this as an issue either themselves or in groups to campaign on it in other countries because until we put it on the agenda of other countries I do not think we are going to move forward as quickly as all of us would wish.

Q215 Chairman: What is the process to get it onto the agenda?

Mr Bradshaw: It is already on the general agenda. The Commission, as a result of UK pressure, has come up with proposals. At this time of year, as I am sure your Committee understand, the minds of certainly fisheries ministers are on other things in the run up to the all-important December councils when the quotas and taxes are set. We shall be pushing it in the New Year in discussions both with the Commissioner and with colleagues. We have written to the Commission giving them evidence already of the success of the trials that we undertook in our own bass fishery this year. We will, of course, send them any evidence that we gather from those recommenced trials this week and throughout the bass fishery season we will keep up as much pressure as we can, but I cannot second-guess what timetable the Commission is going to use to implement the proposals that it has already put in the public domain.

Q216 Chairman: But if you could put a guess on it.

Mr Bradshaw: It is very difficult, Candy. I would hope that they would move forward with concrete proposals next year, but that will not stop us doing whatever we think is necessary in order to mitigate this very serious problem.

Q217 Mr Mitchell: I think you are going to have to press hard and passionately for it because we have just heard from Linda Hingley a very powerful demand for the bass pair trawler with his massive clean up of nets in which the dolphins are crushed and killed to be stopped entirely. We know the difficulties of giving some to get some in trading and the Common Fisheries Policy has been the best example we have had most recently with the industrial fishing which the British Government wants banned but because it needs support from the Danes on other issues it does not get banned. It is going to be incredibly difficult to persuade the French to abdicate anything which they feel is in their interest.

Mr Bradshaw: I think it would be difficult to persuade the French to close the bass fishery altogether, but I do not think it would be difficult to persuade them that this is a serious issue.

Q218 Mr Mitchell: It would not be closing the bass fishery altogether, it would be stopping bass pair trawling and trawling for bass in other fashions, with smaller nets maybe.

Mr Bradshaw: We certainly would not rule that out as an option. All I would say to you is if we can avoid closing the pair trawl fishery through using the mechanisms that have shown themselves to be amazingly and extraordinarily successful this year in reducing the amount of cetacean by-catch then that would be a more sensible course of action. The other thing that is worth pointing out is that cetacean by-catch is not a problem that is solely associated with the bass trawl fishery. This is a problem that happens all over the world in virtually all fisheries and particularly in mixed fisheries. It is very difficult to avoid catching some fish and small sea mammals that you do not want to catch in the fishery. It was Britain that led the way in reaching the international agreement to aim to reduce a by-catch of small cetaceans to 1.7 per cent and we ourselves are aiming at 1 per cent. I repeat what I said, I think it is very important that people recognise the success of the research that we did this year on the separator grid which is being repeated in this current fishing season. I would think it would be very difficult for any other Member State, when shown the evidence that we are already gathering as to how you can avoid catching porpoises and dolphins in this fishery and the relatively low expense of installing these grids, not to follow our example.

Q219 Mr Mitchell: I would be worried because that sounds a little complacent as a reply and I would hope the British Government would take it up more passionately than it is doing. Separator grids were strongly criticised by Linda Hingley as leading to considerable damage, still killing cetaceans and not providing the escape channels that they are supposed to provide. You mentioned our lead in fixing a target of 1.7 per cent of the best estimates of the total population, but we have not achieved that.

Mr Bradshaw: This is one area where I disagree very strongly with what Linda thinks. I did not hear what she told you today but I have heard what she has said in the past about this. I do not know whether members know what these nets look like. I would invite you to view the film that was made of how this works. In the period of seven weeks when these grids are being trialled, they are inserted into the net near the bottom end where the fish are caught so that any larger thing than a bass that comes in hits the grid, which is at an angle, and is then released through a flap in the net. In the period that we would normally have expected, at the height of the bass fishery, to catch in by-catch probably more than 50 dolphins, only two were caught in that period. So it was quite a dramatic reduction.

Q220 Mr Mitchell: You said your experiments were filmed, did you not?

Mr Bradshaw: Yes.

Q221 Mr Mitchell: Linda said they were not.

Mr Bradshaw: She is wrong on that, as she is on one or two other things about these trials. You may like to see the film and I would be happy for you to view the film of the trials that are being done this season as well.

Alan Simpson: These are different from the New Zealand trials, are they?

Chairman: Yes, these are our trials.

Q222 Mr Mitchell: It would be exciting.

Mr Bradshaw: It is very exciting. You will find this as intriguing as I did. For some of the critical period the underwater camera was not working, but the film shows how the system works, not in the case of a dolphin but a shark swims into it and I found this very dramatic and pleasing to watch. It swims in, touches the grid and floats out through the flap while the bass continue to go through the grid. The two dolphins that were killed in the system we believe were actually caught in the flap. One of the things that we have changed in this season's experiment is we have changed the grid from metal to some form of plastic or something that is a bit lighter and we have changed the mesh size of the flap that allows the sea mammal to escape. The findings were very encouraging. As I say, we are not quite sure, to be perfectly honest, why they were so successful. We are not absolutely sure, because we did not catch this on film, whether the dolphins actually went in and out through the flap or whether they just did not enter into the net before because they were put off by the grid. There are a number of electronic devices attached to the net that may have operated in the same way that pingers operate on fixed nets to put off dolphins. That is one of the reasons we wanted to repeat the experiment this year, to try and find out why they worked, but work they did.

Q223 Mr Mitchell: Why have we not achieved the ASCOBANS targets in British catches?

Mr Bradshaw: Because they are pretty ambitious targets and we are working towards them, but it is very difficult to know when we will achieve them because it is quite difficult getting an accurate estimate of the number of porpoises and dolphins in UK waters let alone the number that die as a result of any kind of fishery let alone a bass fishery.

Q224 Mr Mitchell: Would implementing the Defra strategy help us to achieve the target?

Mr Bradshaw: Yes, I think it would.

Q225 Mr Breed: Minister, you will be aware that we already have certain obligations under the EU Habitats Directive and one of those is an obligation to ensure that there is some monitoring of the incidental catches. To what extent do you think that we have been able to fulfil that obligation?

Mr Bradshaw: I think we have been able to fulfil it fairly reasonably. During the trials that we undertook last season there were monitors on the boats all the time and when the people who are running the trials from St Andrew's were not there themselves. It is quite a big logistical problem to monitor every single boat all of the time and we are of a view that it is still much more sensible to monitor on a spot and voluntary basis rather than have permanent compulsory monitors all the time at this stage until we understand more about how the by-catching can be avoided.

Q226 Mr Breed: Are fishermen actually required to notify Defra of any cetacean by-catch?

Mr Capstick: I believe not, though obviously one thing that we do in addition is we do have a contract to monitor strandings which we have been conducting since 1990 and also arranging for a number of post-mortems to be carried out on dolphins and porpoises to see, where we can, the causes of death and that is significant.

Q227 Mr Breed: So you do not believe there is a requirement for fishermen to notify Defra about any cetacean by-catch?

Mr Capstick: We do not believe so.

Q228 Mr Breed: Do you think there ought to be?

Mr Capstick: I suspect one would always have a question as to how reliable the data will be and therefore what you could use the evidence for. I think that would probably be the biggest question.

Q229 Mr Breed: Nevertheless, it might not be a bad idea if they were all made aware of the fact that they had to, even if they did not always do it.

Mr Capstick: I suppose there would be a question of value in relation to the cost that we were imposing.

Mr Bradshaw: It is something worth considering in discussing how the EU as a whole can implement the Commission's proposals.

Q230 Mr Breed: They are required to do all sorts of notifications. I know this would only be one extra thing, but in terms of the whole monitoring exercise it would seem to be quite a good idea. In terms of Defra's strategy, if it was implemented tomorrow, how far do you think it would go in helping to meet the current obligations we have got under the EU Habitats Directive?

Mr Bradshaw: One of the problems about quantifying any of the likely impacts of what we do is we still do not know enough about what is causing the deaths, which sort of fisheries and why. We know that we can take measures like putting pingers on fish nets and that does work and will make a contribution, but it is really very difficult and I would be reluctant to put in numerical terms what percentage difference that would make. Dolphin mortality can vary enormously from year to year and I do not think our understanding is yet scientifically rigid enough for us to be able to quantify the improvements that we might hope to see. As long as we are moving in the right direction and as quickly as possible and using what pressure we can to encourage others to do so as well, that is the best way forward at the moment.

Q231 Mr Breed: But the best available evidence at the moment is that the pair sea bass fishery is likely to be the most responsible for these by-catches?

Mr Bradshaw: In our part of the world, yes, but there are fisheries in the rest of the United Kingdom that also cause cetacean by-catch.

Q232 Mr Lazarowicz: We were told by Linda that she believed there was some European legislation which required notification of instances of cetacean by-catch. Are you aware of any such legislation?

Mr Bradshaw: I am not.

Mr Capstick: I am not personally aware of any but we can check.

Q233 Chairman: And you will let the Committee know?

Mr Capstick: Certainly.

Q234 Mr Mitchell: There seems to be some difference of opinion between Defra and the European Commission about pingers inside and outside the six mile limit because you are proposing that they be used outside the six mile limit. Why is that? There is an argument over porpoises and whether they will be threatened within the six mile limit if you do not have pingers. Why does Defra say they should be compulsory only on vessels operating at least six nautical miles from the coast? Is that for practical reasons of enforcement or is it on environmental grounds?

Mr Bradshaw: I suspect it is for both. In terms of the practicality of it, what we would be concerned to do is to get something that is achievable. When you have major European Union countries like France, for example, resisting the need to have pingers even outside the six mile limit then I think we would be very keen to achieve what we think can be achieved.

Q235 Mr Mitchell: We can achieve the six miles because we control it.

Mr Bradshaw: Absolutely, but I mean in terms of if the European Commission is going to make rules on this. The other reason is that, in terms of enforceability, the problem that is caused within the six mile limit is far less and if we want to make a start on this, let us start where the problem is greatest and see what impact we have there before we move into something that (a) might not be achievable politically within the EU and (b) is not such a big problem.

Mr Capstick: There are porpoises within the six mile limit but I would echo what the Minister says. I think in framing the strategy the concern was to approach things in a measured and sensible way so that we were tackling, first of all, the fisheries that give rise to the biggest problems relative to the number of boats that would be affected.

Q236 Mr Mitchell: The threat to the bottle nosed dolphin as well as porpoises is mainly within the six mile limit, is it not?

Mr Capstick: It is certainly the case that there are porpoises in there, yes.

Q237 Mr Mitchell: And we can control what goes on in the six mile zone whereas outside that we cannot.

Mr Capstick: Yes, we can, but I think we have taken the view in forming the strategy that the main beneficiary certainly in relation to the number of pingers relative to the number of boats applied would be that the main area we would hit is the area outside the six mile zone, but coming inside the six miles raises a number of issues in relation to small craft fishing in smaller areas and therefore that has not been our priority bearing in mind the fact that at the moment we have no obligations at all in this area.

Q238 Mr Mitchell: It could be well worth having a European draft regulation on this issue. Is it going to be modified when that comes into place?

Mr Penny: In terms of the response to the European proposals, they have obviously seen our strategy and they know what our position is and we have raised these same points with the Commission, the fact that we would wish a stabilised approach to be adopted outside the six mile limit and not within certain areas.

Q239 Mr Mitchell: I honestly do not see that because here we can make a start, here are waters we control and yet we are insisting on pingers only outside it.

Mr Penny: It is a step-wise approach and we think the most effective use would be to stay outside the six mile limit and then observe what happens and then we will be having more observers and more testing and we will see if there is an issue we need to address.

Q240 Mr Mitchell: That is very disappointing. On pingers, it is a very expensive business because you have got to have it every so many yards, you have got to change the batteries and there are days of labour involved in doing that, there is failure and these are big nets. Is Defra going to finance the pingers?

Mr Bradshaw: Not fully, no, but there are grants available through FFIG and other sources that could help the industry fund these pingers. One of the reasons that we are not suggesting we do this everywhere immediately is because it is going to involve some pretty considerable costs for the industry and, as my colleagues have already said, the smaller vessels working within the six mile limit might find this more burdensome than the larger vessels who we believe are more responsible for the problem fishing outside. In terms of starting somewhere and not overburdening the industry immediately, that is another of the reasons why we have decided to exclude the six mile limit for the timebeing. You are right, the pingers cost about £60 each and that will be an added expense. In the discussions I have had with those in the industry who share our concern about this, they are certainly prepared to contemplate this and they do not want the fishing industry to be given a bad name. We will give whatever help we can, but there will be a balance of responsibility between the taxpayer and industry.

Q241 Mr Mitchell: Going by past history, Defra is not the most generous of departments when it comes to matters like this. Mr Nick Tregenza told us that the pingers cost £60 each, you have to have them every 100 metres, that is £9,600 to set up the nets and about £500 for batteries every year, and you have to do the battery change intermittently, that is about four man-days of work. So it is an expensive business imposed on an industry which is hovering around bankruptcy. Is it not really the responsibility of Defra to finance these pingers? When you will the ends you have to provide the means.

Mr Bradshaw: It is not Defra, it is you, it is the taxpayer. It is very convenient to pretend that we have our own money; we do not. There is no such thing as Defra money, it is public money.

Q242 Mr Mitchell: As the agency which is imposing it you should have a responsibility to pay for it.

Mr Bradshaw: Yes, and we estimate that in some cases public funding will amount to 75 per cent of the cost of these pingers. We cannot guarantee that we will fund the whole cost or even most of the cost in all circumstances and that is one of the reasons why it is always a balance in these areas. As an MP representing a fishing constituency you know that in all areas of public life it is up to Government to make balances between how far the taxpayer should be responsible for doing something and how far the industry itself should be responsible. A classic example is satellite monitoring where we are about to announce the full funding of the satellite monitoring programme. Many people in your own constituency know they are going to fund 40 per cent of it. You can always make arguments that the taxpayer can fund more, but at the same time you have to go back and explain to your voters why you are putting their taxes up.

Mr Mitchell: Can I suggest you might consider a loan scheme? They would not pay for the pingers at the time of installation, they would pay for them later on, maybe 15 years after the fish have been culled, depending on the scale of their catches and on their income from the use of the pingers.

Q243 Chairman: Perhaps Mr Penny could tell us the state of the bass fishery. Obviously some fisheries are in more difficulty than others.

Mr Bradshaw: The boats that catch bass, contrary to the image that is sometimes portrayed in Britain about the state of our fishing industry, is quite a big part of our fishing industry that is doing extremely well and where stocks are very plentiful. Pelagic stocks, not just bass but herring, mackerel, shellfish, crabs and lobsters, prawns, are all doing extremely well in the UK, so the incomes are there and I do not think it would be unreasonable to expect that those people who are making a profit in the industry and who care, rightly, about their reputation when it comes to cetacean by-catch should be expected to shoulder some of the cost of avoiding that cetacean by-catch.

Q244 Mr Lazarowicz: Your strategy recommends that observers be carried on boats that use pingers, but you suggest this should be done on a voluntary basis. Do you not foresee difficulties with that? Are you confident you will get a positive response from the industry to accept observers on a voluntary basis?

Mr Bradshaw: So far I am. The small number of bass trawlers that are involved in this fishery have responded to our requests and demands has been incredibly encouraging. The fishermen themselves realise it is in their own interest to try to tackle this problem. They realise that people feel very strongly about cetacean by-catch and they want everything possible and reasonable to be done to avoid it happening. At least the vast majority of responsible and sensible fishermen will co-operate and will help us find the solutions that we all want to find.

Q245 Mr Lazarowicz: I am sure the vast majority of responsible fishermen will do that, but in every industry there are people who will not be so responsible and one issue here is how responsible are people and how many are not so responsibly inclined. Is it not the same ones who are most likely to be irresponsible who will most resist doing this on a voluntary basis?

Mr Bradshaw: I do not think so. No one is trying to apportion blame here. This is a problem that afflicts the whole industry and some bits of it more seriously than others and we are trying to find solutions to that problem and we are looking for ways of avoiding it. We are not seeking to catch people out or blame them for a by-catch, we are asking for them to co-operate in a strategy which will avoid it happening and they will benefit from as well.

Q246 Mr Lazarowicz: At what point would you come to the view that the voluntary scheme was not sufficiently comprehensive to allow you to have real information on the effectiveness of using something else?

Mr Capstick: If we found that people in the industry were resisting having observers at all or if they were refusing to fit pingers or if they were refusing to do other things which were being asked of them by our strategy, then we would have to re-visit the issue of compulsory rather than voluntary observers. I do not think it is sensible politically at the outset to go in all guns blazing if only for the fact that it would be considerably more expensive to the taxpayer or the industry, whoever we were going to make pay for it, and when we do not yet know whether or not a voluntary system is going to work.

Q247 Mr Lazarowicz: What kind of people do you envisage acting as these observers, would they be scientists, lay staff, volunteers?

Mr Penny: At the moment they are people employed by and trained by SMRU.

Mr Bradshaw: That is the Sea Mammal Research Unit.

Mr Penny: They are fairly expensive beasties. The Community draft regulation envisages that observers will be independent of the industry and it defines what we require from observers. I heard Barrie's point earlier about using the industry and obviously, as he said, the Minister has been working to involve the industry more in developing fisheries policy. It is an issue we could look at when we are negotiating the regulation in Brussels because the cost of observers and the amount of observation required is an issue which has been raised by a number of Member States and the possibility of training and involving vessel owners as part of this process is obviously something we could look at if it would reduce the cost.

Q248 Mr Lazarowicz: You said people would be recruited in some way by Defra, but what kind of expertise or skills or background are these people coming from? Will they be people from the industry primarily?

Mr Penny: I think in the main they are ex-fishermen. They have expertise in maritime matters, I think it says, and they have scientific expertise as well so they can identify species and they can, if necessary, take scientific samples as required. They do have to have a certain degree of scientific expertise.

Q249 Mr Lazarowicz: All of this works well if it is indeed the case that the vast majority of the people involved in the industry are responsible and want to co-operate with the surveys and experiments, and I have no reason to suggest that they will not, but nevertheless we have heard evidence that suggests that some fishermen will not co-operate and there will be ones who will not want to have the full facts come out in the survey. How can you be sure that you are not going to be putting in place observers who, to put it bluntly, will be too close to the industry to come out with a fair assessment?

Mr Bradshaw: These would be paid for and employed by Defra, they would not be in the pockets of anybody. The fact is that a lot of our best fisheries inspectors are former fishermen because they understand the industry and they know some of the ways of the industry, let me put it as mildly as that. On top of their already fairly difficult and onerous jobs they would be doing some of this as well. Enforcement, as you may be aware, is going to be a major issue in the next two years, not just because of the legal proceedings that the Commission has announced it intends to take against the United Kingdom for our, as it sees it, lax enforcement but also because when the Prime Minister's Strategy Unit reports, as we are expecting it to do in January of next year, we expect it to say some fairly dramatic things about enforcement as well. I think we, as a department, will be wanting to have a look at our enforcement procedures but across the board not just in enforcing or observing on the cetacean by-catch issue. At the moment I think the point is the people who have been doing this so far are highly paid, highly professional marine biologists and I do not think anyone is suggesting that we need to have people quite of that expertise and pay scale to do this. It will be a fairly simple thing to observe as to whether people are complying and what the by-catch problem is. They would not need to do it all the time. There is no reason why you cannot do spot-checks to give you a good impression as to what compliance is like. If we had fishermen who were recalcitrant then we would deal with them in the way that we deal with them on other issues of enforcement where the rules are not being complied with.

Q250 Mr Lazarowicz: The Commission's draft regulation, as I understand it, requires or proposes the use of observer schemes on other fisheries, not just those in which pingers are being deployed. Do you intend to amend your strategy in line with that draft regulation?

Mr Bradshaw: I do not know whether we have any concrete proposals on where we intend to use observers. It is unrealistic to assume that there is suddenly going to be an army of observers all over the place, we are going to have to think very carefully about how we use the observers we do employ and where they are best deployed and what the best use of the time and resources that are available to us as a government are. It is in our interests that this works and is effective and if it can work on a voluntary basis, I hope it does because that is better for the fishing industry and it is certainly better for the taxpayer as well.

Q251 Mr Lazarowicz: How many observers are you envisaging?

Mr Penny: At the moment the Commission proposal is between five and ten per cent of observation. The Sea Mammal Research Unit is about to undertake a research programme which is looking at the requirements for observation within different fisheries to give us a more exact figure of what would be statistically significantly required. The Commission are aware of the research we are doing and they are awaiting our observations on this. It would depend to some extent on which fisheries we are talking about. We could be looking at fairly small percentages up to the five per cent the Commission is looking at.

Mr Bradshaw: Martin has some statistics on this that you may be interested in.

Mr Capstick: This is paragraph 11 of the strategy itself on page 29 where we were referring to the issue of monitoring and assessment of the cost. As Colin says, if we were looking at five to ten per cent levels of observation coverage at a cost of between £300 and £500 a day that would imply a cost of somewhere between £1 million and just under £3 million per year, but there is obviously a question about what we need to do to ensure that we get statistically significant and useful results and ensure that we get results which are useful to us but in a way that does not involve disproportionate cost, which is going to have to be one of the things that we will look at.

Mr Lazarowicz: It sounds like highly paid marine biologists at that daily rate.

Q252 Mr Drew: We have talked quite a lot about the trials with the various types of nets and so on. I think it would be useful to know what continuing work is being undergone and how much further the experimentation will be required to get us to a stage where we at least know what we are dealing with. You have said on a number of occasions "We are still finding things out". Can you map out for me what the timescale now is and what are the likely outcomes in terms of future research?

Mr Bradshaw: We, as the Government, have invested £1 million on this research with the Sea Mammal Research Unit and, following the successful trials this year, I held a meeting with the fishermen who were based in Scotland who do this bass fishery off the South West, with officials, with scientists from the research unit who had undertaken the research, and the fishermen themselves agreed on a voluntary basis to repeat the trials this year and to attach the grids to all of our boats. The Mammal Research Unit again will monitor those trials, they will film it, they will see whether the modifications that they have made to both the grid itself and to the flap make any difference. We hope that they will be as successful as last year, if not more successful, and if they are then I think I have already said on the record that we will make them mandatory in our fishery. The fact is they are in all practice being used in the only fishery which is UK this year anyway. As I said earlier, this is evidence that we will use in the arguments that we make with other EU member countries and with the Commission about how the by-catch can be avoided in this particular fishery.

Alan Simpson: You have delicately referred to observers who understand the ways of the industry. Perhaps you missed an earlier exchange between Linda Hingley and Austin where she referred to them as "crooks".

Mr Mitchell: Not the observers, the fishermen.

Alan Simpson: The fishermen, yes. And Austin corrected her saying that they must be foreigners.

Mr Drew: I think he said French.

Chairman: Specifically, yes.

Q253 Alan Simpson: The thing that worries me is that in the representations that the Committee has had there are lots of references to the monitoring that Defra is committed to but the criticisms are about how little Defra is committed to doing. When we were talking about looking at the effectiveness of pingers, whether it should be inside the six mile limit which we can control or outside which we cannot, the criticisms boil down to this question about what is it that we are prepared to do. I think Linda Hingley put us on the spot in her evidence when she said, "Look, let us be realistic about this. We know that there are high levels of by-catch problems in relation to sea bass trawling. In particular we need to focus on the part that we know is responsible for the greatest problem, which is the bass pair trawlers. Even if we cannot go the same way as the United States with a complete ban that they imposed six years ago, we should ban for one season. If you are talking about observations, the cheapest thing to do is to ban for one season and see what the outcome would be, what level of by-catch problems turn up in the form of dead dolphins on our beaches". Where are we in the doing part of Defra's strategy?

Mr Bradshaw: As I have tried to indicate to the Committee, I think we are doing quite a lot and we are certainly doing more than any other European Union country. I would follow the logic of your argument, Alan, in favour of a ban if there was nothing else that we could do but it seems slightly counterintuitive to me to propose to ban a fishery, put people out of business, prevent them catching fish that people want to eat and is very good to eat, if we can avoid catching the dolphins at the same time. The research that we did this year showed that it is possible to avoid catching dolphins using these mechanisms. If we can achieve that then I would hope that is a solution that most sensible people would support. I do not know, I am not an expert on this, but I understand that the reason the trawl was banned in America was for rather different reasons and that was about sea angling and bass rather than to avoid cetacean by-catch. If we can avoid cetacean by-catch in this fishery there is no point in closing the fishery. There is no problem with the stocks. We close fisheries in this country if there is a problem with stocks and there is no problem with stocks of bass. If we discover in the trials this year that last year was some kind of fluke and by some sort of miracle we managed to avoid catching dolphins, if these separator grids and the flap do not work this year then we will have to revisit this issue and, as I have said on a number of occasions, I do not rule out closing this fishery. If we can find a way to allow fishermen to continue to make a living and me to buy and eat bass while avoiding catching dolphins, surely that is the most sensible course to take.

Q254 Alan Simpson: I think to be fair to her she was quite specific in declaring her interests in eating bass as her favourite fish and making the point that it was not the banning of the whole fishery that she was looking for.

Mr Bradshaw: My remarks just now should have been about the pair trawl fishery which is where these trials are taking place and took place this year.

Q255 Alan Simpson: If there was evidence that the strategy was not working and that the pair trawling was continuing to be a significant part of the problem, you are not averse to coming back to that prospect?

Mr Bradshaw: Absolutely not. I would simply point out that it would be much more effective if we could persuade others to do the same. As I said earlier in this evidence session, we have two, or at most four, pair trawlers on this fishery at any one time and the French have 30. I would be reluctant to take unilateral action in the direction of a ban. I would not completely rule it out but I think it would be much more sensible in terms of trying to save dolphins if we came to that situation where we worked in concert with other European Union countries with the Commission taking the lead.

Q256 Alan Simpson: You quite legitimately raised questions about whether there are other parts of pelagic fisheries that we ought to be looking at, not just bass but also issues about mackerel, hake, tuna and horse mackerel. Could you just tell us whether the logic of what you have described is something that Defra is applying to those other aspects of pelagic fishing? What are you doing and where is the strategy taking it?

Mr Bradshaw: You are right to remind everybody that this is not a problem restricted to the bass pair trawling off the South West of England, it is not. I think because of the high public profile and the fact that this is the biggest concentration and this is where most of the dolphins have been washed up, this is where public attention has been focused in recent years but it is not the only problem of cetacean by-catch in the UK. As I said, the international agreements that we have entered into, and the European Commission, are not restricted to what we do in the bass trawl fishery off the South West, it is in the UK's fishery as a whole. I do not know whether you have anything more to add about what we are doing in the rest of the pelagic fishery or what we are looking at. It is not such a big problem but it is still a problem.

Mr Penny: We are continuing to look at it because we recognise that there is a possibility and, as Linda said earlier, the strandings have started but the mackerel fishery and the bass fishery have both started as well, so it could be one or the other.

Mr Bradshaw: Also it is not just pelagics, dolphins are caught in fisheries for demersal stocks as well in the North Sea. It is not an issue that is just about mid-sea fish.

Q257 Mr Lazarowicz: I am glad you made that point because I think there can be an emphasis on just one particular fish and one particular part of the seas around the UK. What is the Department's assessment of the other nations that are responsible for cetacean by-catch in the North Sea, which is obviously the other major area of concern?

Mr Bradshaw: Perhaps if I could, for the first time in this session, read directly from my brief because it answers that question. On our observations the by-catch of harbour porpoises, for example, has been noted in: UK gillnet fisheries in the Celtic Sea for hake and other species, (these fisheries are also pursued by France, Ireland and Spain); gillnet fisheries in the North Sea for cod and flatfish species, these are fisheries also pursued by Germany, Denmark, Netherlands and Belgium; and the by-catch of common dolphin has been observed mainly in the offshore bass fishery off the South West coast. I think one of the helpful things that your Committee's investigation into this can highlight is that this is a rather deeper and broader problem than is the common public perception which has tended to concentrate purely on the bass fishery off the South West of England; it is much wider than that.

Q258 Mr Lazarowicz: That being so, what discussions have you had with these governments? What pressure have you put on them to adopt an approach which is at least as rigorous as that of the UK?

Mr Bradshaw: Some of the countries are also doing quite a lot. Denmark, for example, I think I am right in saying, has already fitted pingers, so in that respect it is ahead of us. Those of you who know about fisheries will know that the European Union countries tend to split into the more conservation minded, in which I include the United Kingdom, the Scandinavian countries and Germany, and those which have a slightly different attitude to the environment, which are the ones I have not named.

Q259 Mr Lazarowicz: What kind of sharing of information is there between the UK Government and the devolved administrations, on the one hand, and these other nations to ensure that these measures are actually making a difference?

Mr Bradshaw: We have already shared all of our information with the Commission and in discussions with them that led to the Commission announcing its own proposals. As we gather evidence in this season, which will begin this week, we will share that with the Commission again and we will go back to the French, from whom we are still awaiting a formal response to a letter my predecessor Elliot Morley sent on this, and impress on them the importance of taking this issue seriously.

Q260 Mr Lazarowicz: What information are you getting from the other nations you have mentioned who are involved in other fisheries where there is a cetacean by-catch problem?

Mr Bradshaw: I do not know if there is anything we have usefully learned from other nations that are doing other things.

Q261 Mr Lazarowicz: To ensure what they are doing is having an effect or is a step in the right direction.

Mr Bradshaw: The research shows that pingers work. I do not know whether our Danish friends have actually been doing it for long enough to supply us with any data, have they?

Mr Penny: Their research reports were the background to the Commission's proposals, as ours were as well.

Q262 Mr Lazarowicz: What about the others, the Germans, the Spanish and the rest you mentioned?

Mr Penny: I think there have been exchanges at a scientific level but I am not aware of them being very public. The Commission is about to start funding collaborative research projects into the pelagic problems and mitigation measures. I think Denmark, Ireland, France and Netherlands are all part of that collaborative group, so we are building up and we have got France involved. France has been involved quite a lot in discussions with our scientists about the separator grid.

Q263 Mr Lazarowicz: If it is the case that it is not just a question of the French and the South West, there are also issues regarding these other fisheries, is this not something that should be higher up the political agenda with the other nations that we have heard about?

Mr Bradshaw: I think it should be higher up the agenda. As you will be aware, certainly for the last 12 months because of the more immediate and very large questions of stock levels, and particularly problems with cod and hake, it is inevitable that most member countries and their political class and, indeed, their fishing industry has been grappling to cope with some of the problems that have arisen as a result of the depletion of cod stocks and the very difficult and tough decisions that we have had to take in the Common Fisheries Policy, and will probably have to take again this December. I would hope that if we can get through this December's council and reach agreement not just on next year's tax and quotas but also put on a firm footing what the Commission would like to do, which is a multi-annual approach to tax and quotas, once we have published our own - this is a once in a 30 year strategic investigation report on our fishing industry - which again has been taking up a lot of our own thought and officials' time, these are the sort of environmental issues that will be able to come much higher up the agenda with other Member States and we shall be certainly doing what we can to make sure that they do.

Q264 Mr Lazarowicz: Within the UK has the cetacean by-catch issue been on the agenda of the Joint Ministerial Committee?

Mr Bradshaw: You mean with my devolved colleagues in Scotland and Wales?

Q265 Mr Lazarowicz: Yes.

Mr Bradshaw: It is not an issue that I can recall. I have only been in the job for less than six months but it is not an issue that we have discussed with my colleagues in the devolved administrations, no.

Q266 Chairman: Minister, you have been generous with your time but I have one last question. Your predecessor, who you just mentioned, was reported in quite a few newspapers in February of last year as saying that he estimated that maybe 50 dolphins a day were getting caught in the bass pair trawl fishery. Do you think that was an accurate estimate?

Mr Bradshaw: I am sure it was if that was the figure he gave out. That is a politician's answer for you.

Q267 Chairman: Perhaps it highlights the enormity of the issue. Thank you very much and thank you to your officials. We are going to see the Commission ourselves in connection with the marine environment investigation that we are doing and it may well be that Members will be pursuing these issues with the Commission in the New Year if we agree that is the way forward, but we will be looking in the New Year to be reporting.

Mr Bradshaw: I would encourage you to do so and also encourage you, if you have not already done so - I think they have provided written evidence - to talk to the Sea Mammal Research Unit people from St Andrews because they have been doing some excellent work and their research is ongoing.

Chairman: Thank you very much. Thank you for your time. We will see you again, no doubt.