Caught! French drop fishing nets just 6 miles off Cornwall
FISHING nets released and trailing along behind, this French vessel is so close to the UK you can see British soil in the background.
The fishermen were caught on camera just six nautical miles from Cornish shorelines – twice as close as they are supposed to get under EU regulations. They were likely attempting to catch sea bass, haddock or mackerel.
EU rules allow the French to work up to 12 nautical miles off the UK coast. Older boats can use a special clause – known as Grandfather Rights – to move within six. However, Cornish fishermen fear newer vessels are exploiting the loophole to access better fish stocks.
The warning comes amid rising tensions between British and French fishermen, with access to UK waters set to be a crucial battleground in Brexit negotiations. It follows summer’s ‘scallop war’, which led to violent clashes at sea.
Last weekend up to 20 boats were spotted sitting off the Cornish coast, in what one expert described as the ‘biggest ever invasion’. Fishermen say the influx was likely down to bad weather – meaning British boats remained in dock, unable to confront them.
Westerly winds gave the French boats perfect cover to claim they were simply seeking shelter. But skippers who have spent their lives working the area say the phenomenon is nothing new.
One produced this photograph, taken six nautical miles from land in January last year, which clearly shows a boat towing nets to trap fish. Official records show the 22.5m-long vessel, Erispoe, was built in the year 2000. This would mean it is not entitled to Grandfather Rights, which allow foreign vessels to access other countries’ coastal waters if they had historically done so before the Common Fishery Policy was introduced in 1970. It is therefore not entitled to come closer than 12 nautical miles off UK land – but Erispoe has continued to do just that, and was one of the boats spotted around six miles from the Cornish coast on Sunday. It was not alone, with around eight other boats fishing at the same time. Fishermen fear the boats are plundering stocks of mackerel, haddock and sea bass.
Angus Bateson, 62, from Looe, said: ‘The biggest problem here is that no one is policing things around here. The French are just pulling up here and putting their nets down. Now there’s not enough fish there for us.’
Tensions have been simmering for months, with footage showing fishermen ramming into each others’ boats during a war over scallops in August.
Britons had been accused of ‘looting’ scallops in the Bay of Seine, in Northern France.
British fishermen can collect them all year round, but the French are restricted by local law to a scallop season of October 1 to May 15. In September, French trawlers were accused of being behind hundreds of thousands of pounds’ worth of damage to Cornish fishing gear.
The French were also accused of double standards that same month when they were caught taking thousands of pounds of bluefin tuna. The UK has no EU quota to catch the fish, but France does – so its boats are effectively given free rein in British waters.
A spokesman for France’s agricultural ministry said: ‘All alleged infringements of EU laws are investigated as appropriate.’