are discards being ignored?

Government slammed for lack of monitoring

Barely six months after the ‘discard ban’ on commercial fishing came fully into force across Europe, the UK Government has been criticised for failing to enforce it.

The ban, more properly known as the EU Landings Obligation, was introduced to eliminate the practice of commercial fishers throwing dead fish back to sea.

It’s worth remembering that it was the UK that pushed hardest for the ban, yet now appears to be failing to monitor whether anyone is bothering to comply with the regulations.

A House of Lords EU Energy and Environment Sub-Committee has found very little evidence of quotas being reached or unwanted, undersized or over-quota fish being landed, suggesting that the ban is being ignored, with very little enforcement or monitoring by Government agencies.

To make matters worse, quota uplifts were granted to the commercial industry in recognition of fish that would otherwise have been discarded dead being landed.

The Angling Trust is calling on the Government to urgently address this situation of Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) fishing by the UK fishing fleet. It wants full implementation of the catch-reporting measures for the under 10-metre fleet as soon as possible, the introduction of vessel monitoring systems for the under 10m fleet, as well as onboard CCTV and observers on over 10m vessels to ensure that the discard ban is being complied with.