New Quota for British Fishermen Allows 30,000 Tonnes More Catch Than Before Brexit

A fishing boat sits moored in the harbour in Lerwick, Shetland Islands, on Feb. 4, 2017. Andy Buchanan /AFP via Getty Images

The UK has been granted a quota of around 30,000 tonnes more catch following negotiations as a result of Brexit, the fishing minister announced.

On Tuesday, the government announced a new quota deal with the EU that will take the total potential catches for UK trawlers in 2023 up to £750 million.

Rows over fishing rights in British waters have been at the centre of post-Brexit negotiations and its Common Fisheries Policy, the mechanism through which European fishing fleets and fish stocks are managed, since the UK voted to leave the EU in 2016.

Fishing Rights

Negotiations between Britain and the EU have stumbled over fisheries, fair competition, and how to settle disputes. At one point, the UK government dispatched two Royal Navy ships to Jersey as French fishing boats gathered near the island in protest over post-Brexit fishing rights.

As an independent coastal state, the UK government is responsible for managing the UK’s territorial waters.

The government said the deal with the EU will give UK fishermen the opportunity to catch 140,000 tonnes of fish, worth more than £280 million, after annual fisheries negotiations with the bloc concluded.

That takes the value of fishing opportunities secured for the British industry out of the three main negotiation forums between the EU, UK, and Norway to £750 million, a £34 million increase on last year.

Minister of State for Farming, Fisheries, and Food Mark Spencer in an undated file photo. Victoria Jones/PA

‘Independent Coastal State’

Minister of State for Farming, Fisheries, and Food Mark Spencer told the Commons on Tuesday: “The UK’s fishing opportunities are negotiated in three main forums. Firstly, UK–EU bilateral. Today the UK reached an agreement with the EU on total allowable catches for 2023 on 69 stocks as well as arrangements for non-quota stocks.”

“As an independent coastal state, we have taken back control of our waters, we have the freedom to negotiate on our own terms and push for deals that will deliver for the UK fishing industry, for the marine environment for all parts of the United Kingdom,” he added.

“This autumn, I’m delighted to say that the UK has secured vital deals for 2023 with our coastal state neighbours like the European Union and Norway. Taken together these deals have secured over £750 million worth of fishing opportunities for the UK fleet in 2023, an additional £34 million more than last year,” said Spencer.

Mike Cohen, deputy chief executive of the National Federation of Fishermen’s Organisations (NFFO), told The Epoch Times that there “are some promising outcomes from this.”

An initial estimate suggests nine more catch levels aligned with the scientific advice than last year.

Cohen said that it’s “good to see the scientific advice being followed, despite some pressure groups calling for quotas to be cut in the face of scientific advice that shows stocks are growing.”

Activists at Blue Marine Foundation and Oceana UK, have voiced anger over the new catch quotas.

However, Cohen added that the English distant water fleet has not done so well and has lost fishing opportunities “very substantially” over the last few years.

But that was “a result of negotiation not because of stock changes,” he said.

Spacial Squeezes

On land, the British farming industry is facing major issues across almost all sectors, with the prices of animal feed, nitrogen fertiliser, and fuel skyrocketing.

In December, the National Farmers Union (NFU) warned of an upcoming food crisis, with yields of crops likely to slump to record lows this year, as well as farmers also considering reducing the size of their herds.

Cohen said that there are mounting concerns in the fishing industry around “spacial squeezes” from the loss of fishing grounds to an array of competing spatial pressures such as wind farms and protected marine areas.

For the NFFO, extensive displacement of fishing activity from these areas is a serious threat to the UK’s food security.

“At the moment, we’re seeing a lot of offshore construction of wind farms, we’re seeing a huge amount of industrial development. On the other hand, we’re also seeing coastal areas to be designated as marine protected areas or protected marine areas,” said Cohen.

Boats sail the River Tyne during the Fishing For Leave flotilla in North Shields, United Kingdom, on March 15, 2019. Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

“What’s getting squeezed out is fishing with a sort of assumption that fishing will go somewhere else,” he added.

“There are records of commercial fishing and people selling fish on the market that go back 800 years in Scarborough town hall. If there was something to capture somewhere else, we'd be capturing it already,” he added.

“You can’t continually move fishing on and assumably continue with a different location,” said Cohen.

PA Media contributed to this report.