Examination of Witness (Questions 40-46)
Dr Joe Horwood
5 MARCH 2008
Q40 Baroness Sharp of Guildford:
We have got one for the North Sea. Is there an Irish Sea one?
Dr Horwood: There is the North Sea one, there
is a western one which covers all our western waters of interest
and then there is another one that goes down to Iberia, and there
is a deep sea RAC and there is a pelagic RAC. The pelagic RAC
would affect the North Sea pelagic fisheries because they are
really quite a separate different industry.
Q41 Lord Plumb: Do they meet together
in Brussels occasionally?
Dr Horwood: I do not know the answer to that.
They certainly meet under ICES because there is an annual ICES/RAC
meeting where all the RACs meet with ICES in one place.
Q42 Lord Palmer: Aquaculture also
comes under your responsibility. To what extent do you see developments
such as cod farming alleviating the pressure on sea fisheries?
In light of some of the work that you have undertaken, what risks
might these developments entail? Do you see a relatively rosy
future for aquaculture in the long term or are you yourself a
bit sceptical about it?
Dr Horwood: I am less of an expert on aquaculture.
To me it seems a priority is to get our North Sea cod stocks back
up to 150,000 tonnes, which is where they should be and the bulk
of our fish be taken from places like that. It is a bit difficult
to see that these huge volumes of fish can be generated through
aquaculture although, conceptually, they can. It takes between
two and five times the weight of a fish developed in aquaculture
to produce it. Of our typical whitefish, to produce a kilogram
of farmed cod will take five kilograms of food, which has got
to come from somewhere and that somewhere is typically our industrial
fisheries, so from the North Sea sandeel fishery or the Peruvian
anchovy fishery. To some degree it is affected by your philosophy
as to how bona fide those fisheries are. Global fish production
does seem to have peaked and stablised. In general we are not
going to produce a huge amount more fish from the sea. The aquaculture
side has continued to rise, but it does have to be fed. I understand
they are developing non-fish food for aquaculture. There are a
few vital amino acids that seem to be absent from vegetable feeds,
but they seem to be solving those problems. It is possible that
some of the environmental issues might be solved. It does seem
that we should be producing the bulk of our fish food from our
natural fisheries.
Q43 Chairman: Just imagine, if you
can, a sort of fantasyland where the Secretary of State comes
to you one day and says, "I am feeling particularly brave
and farsighted and I really do want your advice on one or two
policy initiatives I can take to really set us on the road towards
a sustainable fisheries policy." What would you say to him
or her?
Dr Horwood: I guess two things after saying
that clearly the Secretary of State's view is a lot wiser than
mine on these matters. A key thing is to get the capacity in line
with the resource and if that happen a lot of the temporal pressures
disappear from the system; people's livelihoods are much more
secure. I guess the other one is to develop a greater understanding
of the role of the local inshore fisheries to the local community,
how that interaction is working and do we need to support it and
sustain it. This is quite different from our big commercial offshore
systems. There are lots of areas where you feel that small fishing
is integral to the wellbeing of the community and does one secure
a future for that and, if so, how.
Q44 Viscount Ullswater: Does that
mean you are going to reduce the amount of over ten-metre boats?
Is that the sort of area where the biggest modernity comes from,
the ten-metre boats plus?
Dr Horwood: Yes, it does.
Q45 Lord Palmer: It is not the under
ten-metre boats that are causing the environmental or the fish
stock problems?
Dr Horwood: The vast bulk of the catch is by
the offshore over ten-metre vessels. One can say that 95% of the
fishing is by these larger vessels, so that is where the big capacity
issues arise. The inshore fisheries are a hugely complex network
of different things. They have problems of safety, they cannot
move very far and if there is some vulnerable species there they
cannot necessarily avoid them. It may be a target species, for
example, some species of ray which are being caught throughout
the North Sea and we want to stop people fishing them if we can.
This may be a massive problem for a small local less than ten-metre
vessel where for two months of the year that is what they catch.
They will still be catching a minute amount compared with the
other vessels. They do have a different character to them.
Q46 Chairman: There is a bit of all
that that is pretty depressing. The last time I was at all involved
in fisheries policy was ten years ago and even then they were
saying things like the TAC-driven system is inadequate, there
is a need to reduce fishing effort, there was the hope that technical
innovation would ride to the rescue, there was the horror of discards
and there was a gap between the scientists and the fishermen.
They all seem to be still there!
Dr Horwood: One of the things that I have found
really since Net Benefits is that there has been much, much greater
co-operation between the fishermen and the scientists. That does
not mean at all that you have to agree on all occasions, but I
have to say that the dialogue itself is much, much healthier than
it was five or ten years ago. It is possible to disagree in a
much more normal way. This is quite difficult because it is their
livelihoods. We are saying you should cut back by 50% and they
are saying, "This is my mortgage you are talking about."
That element has improved. We are really working at that; it is
really quite a significant priority. Unfortunately so much has
been dominated by cod recovery and the issues associated with
that that it colours our perception of just about everything else.
Chairman: Thank you very much indeed. I think
we are going to have to refer continually to what you have said
as we proceed with this inquiry, but it has been enormously helpful.
Thank you.
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