Daniel Swain hooks into Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's criticisms of the EU's Common Fisheries Policy.

Hugh Fearnley -Whittingstall’s latest political campaign against ‘that crazy EU’ is full of holes and risks becoming quite accidentally right-wing. But whilst it does outline a potential problem with overfishing, it ignores the fact that EU policy has actually been quite successful, and fails to recognise the difficulties of crafting an efficient policy for such a complex ecosystem as those of all the seas of Europe.

Hugh is ticked off about the European Union’s Common Fisheries Policy (CFP), which imposes quotas on fishermen of various nationalities in order to prevent over-fishing. Fishing presenting something of what economists like to call a ‘tragedy of the commons’, there is no incentive for fisherman to not fish loads, but the result of them doing so would be fish extinction. And that’s bad – people like fish (I’m going to try and keep this as quirky as possible. Because it’s about fish).

Oft quoted figures say that at current trends, fish stocks in the North Sea will be gone in 50 years and that a sizable percentage, around 40 percent of all fish caught by North Sea fishermen are ‘discarded’ – thrown back into the sea. Many of these fish then go on to die and have little fishy funerals. This presents an obvious problem, as it depletes fish stocks without them being caught – it’s a bit of a waste, and people don’t like waste. Grr. Waste.

The reason discarding happens is because fishermen catch a wide variety of species of fish at once, the quota levels of which are all different. Fish hauls are indistinguishable until the catching process is complete. Thus, one huge haul can result in either an entire load being thrown back into the sea or none being thrown back at all.

Whilst discarding is a problem with the CFP, it is trivial when considered alongside the CFP’s success. The CFP has reduced lands, the amount of fish caught that are brought ashore, to about a third of its 1970 level – after the policy was introduced. The incredibly simplistic policy has achieved its initial objective, despite having problems. Even considering those fish which are discarded, less fish are being caught now than before.

In addition to ignoring the CFP’s effectiveness in reducing fishing levels, albeit crudely, Hugh’s grand campaign doesn’t seem to have any actual objective besides getting EU leaders to talk about reforming the fisheries policy, without presenting any real alternative policy which ceases the practice of discards. He demands vast ‘reforms’ immediately. Furthermore, Hugh’s worry about depleting fish stocks is not necessarily compatible with his grave, emotional concern over quotas. Whilst complex policies could be enacted to reduce waste, some waste is inevitable in any bureaucratic system.

Even worse, Hugh’s rage at EU authorities and consumers for having the gall not to have the taste for certain fish, something explored below, seems to miss the main culprit. If fishing is so inefficient that they have to dispose of half the fish they catch, surely they should go back to the pissing drawing board. EU fishing quotas are also deemed to be over generous, so surely the correct response is to restrict quotas further.

Whilst this may have a negative effect on the fishing industry, isn’t the main lesson to draw from this that fishing is fundamentally unsustainable and thus needs systemically changing? Of course, the real problem is our ‘tastes’. If humans liked the fish that lived closer to the shore, we could have a much more efficient fishing industry that could benefit from fish farming and closer monitoring. The fact we don’t like them is admittedly, totally our problem. But Whittingstall’s moaning about us ‘rediscovering’ our taste is somewhat useless, what would probably be necessary is a system of pricing and subsidies to price crappy fish into the taste market. But no one would like that. It’d be ‘totalitarian’, another imposition by ‘those unelected bureaucrats in Brussels’.