THE SMELL of boiling fish from a giant fish -meal factory will hang over next week's
fourth North Sea conference at Esbjerg, Denmark. Appropriately, because, for the first time,
this forum of eight countries might decide on restrictions on commercial fishing.
Ministers will discuss closing areas of the North Sea to study the effect that over-fishing is
having on wildlife. They are likely to be bullied into carrying out further research into the
effects of the Danish industrial fishery, based in Esbjerg itself, which takes more than a
million tonnes of small fish from the North Sea each year, depriving other fish and wildlife of food.
As we enter a fortnight of traditional point-scoring about the pesticides, toxic chemicals and
other pollution entering the sea (most of it in decline), it is worth remembering the conclusions of the North Sea Quality Status Report, produced by scientists from all eight countries. This says that over-fishing and eutrophication - the excess of nutrients from agriculture which can lead to toxic algal blooms - are the principal problems today.
So what is the chief culprit for declining fish stocks, fishing or pollution? A fisheries scientist
recently observed: "Pollution may affect fish populations but fishing certainly does. It is
designed to kill fish."
Modern fishing methods are the worst of all man's assaults on the marine ecosystem, and we
are only now beginning to understand their effects. These include direct eradication of fish stocks, the over-exploitation of slow-growing, non-target species, the destruction of sea -bed organisms by fishing gear and the effect of industrial fishing for tiny fish at the base of the food chain on which a host of organisms depend for their food.
PALATABLE FISH
Most North Sea fish stocks are more intensively exploited than ever before, says the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES).
"If the present level of fishing mortality is maintained... all these stocks [cod, haddock, saithe,
whiting, sole and plaice] are expected to remain close to or outside safe biological limits," says the ICES advisory committee on fishery management. The North Sea mackerel is commercially extinct and the common skate increasingly uncommon.
ICES says the North Sea stock of cod is currently outside safe biological levels and that fishing
for cod "should be reduced to zero in the short term" (politically impossible). It also says that
mis-reporting and illegal fish landings mean the total recommended catch has been exceeded
each year, and calls for a 30 per cent cut this year.
INDUSTRIAL FISHING
The Danes' vast fishery for sand eels, blue whiting and Norway pout, centred on Esbjerg,
where the conference is held, is unrestricted. Conservationists and anglers believe that the
taking of about 1 million tonnes of small fish each year damages the food chain on which
seabirds, salmon and sea mammals depend.
Few fisheries scientists agree. They say that, broadly, the amount of biomass the sea produces
is the same, regardless of what is taken out. What this means is that there may now actually be more tiny fish such as sand eels because voracious predators such as the cod have been removed.
Those who look one stage further believe the danger of over-fishing might be the replacement of a fish -based ecosystem with a jellyfish ecosystem.
Nobody really knows what the effect of industrial fishing is. One of the few studies conducted
showed that a 40 per cent reduction in industrial fishing could produce a 21 per cent increase in whiting but only three per cent more cod.
Next week's conference is under pressure to agree to carry out more research into understanding industrial fisheries, but is likely to duck out of recommending "precautionary" restrictions since this would mean each country giving the Danes some of their white-fish quota.
RECOMMENDATIONS
The conference will consider the proposal that a series of "undisturbed areas" should be designated throughout the North Sea to study the effects of the recovery of the ecosystem when fishing is stopped.
This will be highly controversial. One of the objections is that closed areas would be rough on local fishermen, who would be kept out of their traditional fishing grounds. Closed areas would also push trawlers into areas where they do not at present operate.
There is also the question of what closed areas are for. Are they meant to show the likely recovery of sea bed fauna - in which case they could be small - or entire fish stocks, which would mean they would have to be very large indeed?
The political problems will be formidable: the acid test will be whether the conference asks the European Commission and Norway to "consider" or to "make" proposals for experimental closed areas. When one considers that the first protected areas for wildlife on land were set up more than 120 years ago, the time to do so at sea seems long overdue.
