The Daily Telegraph

It’s Britain that has breathed new life into North Sea cod

- FOLLOW Charles Clover on Twitter @Crhclover; READ MORE at telegraph.co.uk/opinion CHARLES CLOVER Charles Clover is Executive Director of the Blue Marine Foundation

The astounding recovery of the North Sea cod – to the point where fillets on the cold shelf are now about to be awarded the blue tick of eco-certificat­ion, after years of danger – was not a victory for the EU.

In fact, we should thank a British initiative that went beyond the EU’S flawed recovery plan. The fortunes of cod should stand as a model of how Britain could manage its waters better, and resist pressure for access from other countries once it becomes an independen­t coastal state.

The revival of this fish nearly did not happen. As I reported on the front page of this newspaper in 1997, at one point illegal fishing was taking 50 per cent of cod, haddock and saithe in the North Sea. Fishermen were throwing away the only promising year of juveniles in decades as “discards”. A Newfoundla­nd-style crash was on the cards.

The Government and EU clamped down on “black fish” landings. Part of the fleet went to the wall, but it was not enough. What saved the cod was a partnershi­p between fishermen and environmen­talists: they devised area closures to protect juveniles, special nets that caught haddock but not cod and other measures that went far beyond those required by the EU.

Fishermen’s leaders rightly urged members to take the pain to get a long-term gain. Where there has not been the same leadership – in the Irish Sea, the Clyde, and the west of Scotland, with bass in the Channel – stocks remain in a parlous state.

We will need the same progressiv­e leadership if we are to maintain and increase the fish in UK waters after Brexit, as Michael Gove, the Environmen­t Secretary, has promised.

Paradoxica­lly, only by offering demonstrab­ly better management of our fish stocks within the 200-mile limit that did not exist when we entered the Common Market will we calm the Dutch, Belgian, Danish and French voices clamouring for access and give them certainty that there might one day be more fish, not only for us but for them.

Post Brexit, Britain has an opportunit­y to show the leadership in its own waters that it has shown in global marine issues by protecting four million square kilometres around its Overseas Territorie­s. The huge reserves designated or proposed around the British Indian Ocean Territory, Pitcairn, Ascension, St Helena and Tristan da Cunha amount to an area almost as big as the EU.

There is more to do and setbacks to overcome, such as the sorry fiasco of the closure of the runway on Ascension. This disastrous blow to the island’s economy urgently needs to be rectified by the Foreign Office and the US Air Force. But overall the “Blue Belt” policy should be an inspiratio­n to the world.

Wider still, on the seas beyond national jurisdicti­on, Britain can exert much needed influence, too, on some of the scandalous­ly weak internatio­nal bodies that manage the oceans. Britain gets most of its tuna from the Indian Ocean, where stocks are overfished, but there are no quotas.

Consumers of fish can only benefit if a more global Britain demonstrat­es leadership in UK waters and oceans of the world.

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