Seems the commercial fishermen are angry about the bass management plan

---- Press Release----

IMMEDIATE RELEASE August 10 2006


Cornish fishermen are outraged at Ben Bradshaw’s announcement today, increasing the minimum landing size for sea bass from 36cm (37.5cm in Cornwall) to 40cm for UK fishermen.

Paul Trebilcock Chief Executive of the Cornish Fish Producer’s Organisation said, “Quite honestly I think Ben Bradshaw has lost the plot! He hasn’t listened to commercial fishermen and there is certainly not the science to back this move. This will do nothing for the bass stock and is quite simply a sop to a minority group of elitist anglers. To say we are angry is an understatement!

There will be massive implications for fishermen targeting bass as well as those who take it as a part of their main catch. This is ludicrous when you take into account that bass is a stock that is being fished sustainable at present according to his own scientists.

The only things this measure will achieve are to increase discards, bankrupt UK fishermen and hand the domestic bass market to our European competitors of a stock which is being fished sustainably.

This regulation is unilateral therefore French and Belgian fishermen, who already account for approximately 70% of the total bass landings, will continue to fish legally into 6 miles off our coast retaining the bass that are supposed to be being protected. Consequently the regulation will be ineffectual as bass will still be taken at 36cm, therefore any supposed benefit to fishermen, anglers and perhaps most importantly the bass stock will not happen. If Bradshaw was serious about doing something for the bass stock it should have been done at a European level but I suspect that was too difficult without a sound scientific argument and so he went for the easy target –the UK fishermen to score points with the anglers.

It gets worse as well as he has stated that he intends to go further and increase the minimum landing size further to 45cm in a few years time, we might as well forget bass fishing if that happens.

We along with fishermen around the UK are seriously looking into the legal implications of this announcement and we feel that there may be grounds to challenge this on the basis of discrimination and prejudicing the human rights of UK fishermen to earn a legitimate living -something he has made increasingly difficult in recent years!

For More Information Please Contact: Paul Trebilcock Chief Executive of CFPO
01736 351 050