July 2, 2012 — The EU says it is committed to ending overfishing. DW visited a thriving fishing community in Cornwall where new regulations on fishing practices are being seen as a way to safeguard the future.
Beam trawlers, long liners and small open boats used for hand-lining mackerel bob on the water in Newlyn, a fishing port in Cornwall, England. The smell of sea salt hangs in the air. A fish market near the harbor has just closed and men in yellow boots scrub away fish guts.
"For every fisherman that goes to sea, there's seven people who work on shore to help support the industry," one fisherman told DW. "It's vital. It's what Newlyn is."
Newlyn is home to one of the largest fishing fleets in Britain and contributes millions of pounds to the local economy each year. But to keep profits up, crews sort the fish before returning to shore. Lower value fish gets tossed back into the water, even though it is already dead.
How discarding works
In the EU, fish that are discarded do not have to be counted against quotas. Conservation groups say two-thirds of fish captured in European waters are thrown back dead into the sea. They blame the EU's common fisheries policy, under which fleets are awarded a quota for each species they may catch. When fishing crews catch more than their quota allows, they throw the excess back.
The practice of discarding edible fish results in the waste of more than a million tons of fish in the EU each year. The fish may be of a size or species that commands too low a price on the market. Fishing crews sometimes toss fish back into the water because they have slime or abrasions that could cause damage the rest of the fish in the haul. Sometimes, there is simply a lack of space on board and target species take precedence over lower value or non-target species.
Discarding is widely considered to be unethical and a waste of resources. Following marathon talks in Luxembourg earlier this month, the European Commission drafted a compromise agreement to phase-in a ban on discards from 2014.
Read the full story in Deutsche Welle