22 December, 2005

EUROPEAN scientists and policymakers should start to look at the real reasons why North Sea cod stocks have failed to recover before they impose yet more painful cuts, according to a Conservative Euro MP.

As the end of year fisheries council talks got under way in earnest yesterday (Wednesday), Struan Stevenson said global warming was the long term cause of ongoing cod depletion.

Over recent years temperatures in the North Sea have risen by an average of two degrees centigrade, making the water too warm for the phyto-plankton that cod larvae feed on.

This rich source of fish food has therefore moved around 200 miles north to the seas around Norway, Iceland and Faroe, causing massive mortality rates among young cod who continue to spawn in their traditional spawning grounds around Scotland, he said.

"There is a significant school of thought in the European Commission and the Council of Ministers who seem to think that 'Cod is God' and are determined to decimate Britain's whitefish fleet in order to protect a stock that is being wiped out by an act of nature, rather than by UK fishermen.

"My key concern is that the 'Cod is God' brigade are unnecessarily cutting the quotas on other commercial species to try to avoid a cod by-catch in the mixed fishery around the UK coasts.

"Scottish fishermen told me yesterday in Brussels that you could virtually walk to Norway on the backs of haddock right now, they are in such abundance.

"There is an estimated 450,000 tonnes of haddock in the North Sea, a fact that even the scientists agree with. However, the Commission is demanding further savage cuts to the haddock catch in a vain attempt to save cod.

"It is ludicrous and simply will not work. We will destroy the UK whitefish fleet without achieving any recovery of cod stocks. In the past five years we have seen 62 per cent of the UK whitefish fleet scrapped, together with savage cuts in quotas and days at sea, all aimed at allowing cod stocks to recover.

"The fact that cod have stubbornly refused to re-populate the North Sea should be proof enough that over-fishing has not been the only cause of their demise. Global warming is clearly to blame."