Tag Archives: British fishermen

British fishermen face £199 fee to export catch to EU in post-Brexit blow

Fishermen in Pembrokeshire are facing a £199 fee to export their products to the EU. The fee is being introduced by the County Council’s Cabinet to allow the Port Health Team to issue ECHs. The certificates are mandatory for all companies in the UK exporting or moving live animal products to the EU post-Brexit. A spokesperson from Pembrokeshire Cabinet said: “As a result of Brexit, fishery products exported to the European Union from the United Kingdom now require an EHC, as laid out in the Official Control Regulations 2017/625.” Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson had promised UK fishermen they would be fully protected in the event of any post-Brexit trade deal with the European Union, which was signed on December 30, 2020. >click to read< 07:59

Troubled Waters – British Fishermen and Brexit

More than two years after Brexit, British fishermen are angry. They were promised more control over fishing rights in British waters, but what they’ve gotten is reduced income. Many of them voted Leave, but now they feel they’ve been let down. The fishing industry overwhelmingly supported Brexit. Darren Kenyon is a fisherman from Grimsby in North East England. He believed in the government’s Brexit promises – including more control over fishing rights in British waters — and voted Leave. But two and a half years after Brexit, he feels betrayed by Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Kenyon’s income is lower than it used to be and there’s more red tape than ever. >click to read< 12:10

Rising fuel costs: British fishermen are being forced to tie up their boats

The rise has left fishermen struggling to cover their costs, with some reportedly resorting to leaving their boats in port. June Mummery, ex-MEP and founder of the Renaissance of the East Anglian Fisheries, tweeted: “Fisherman tying up, fuel so expensive, not worth going to sea.” Britain’s fishing industry has issued a number of warnings in recent months that the spike in fuel costs could force them to tie up their boats and have a devastating impact on the UK’s food supply. The Shetland Fishermen’s Association issued a plea for help in March warning that the war in Ukraine had seen the cost of marine diesel in the islands more than double compared to the previous year. >click to read< 08:05

British Fishermen Feared Pro-Brexit Campaigners Would Betray Them—and They Did

Few communities in the United Kingdom were as supportive of Brexit as fishermen. Politicians pushing for the country to leave the European Union capitalized on the widespread perception that EU regulators favored fishermen from the continent over those from the United Kingdom when allocating fishing quotas. They promised that post-Brexit, UK fishermen would have unfettered access to domestic waters. Perhaps unsurprisingly, an estimated 92 percent of the UK fishing community intended to vote for Brexit in 2016. >click to read< 09:32

Brexit, an “ocean of possibilities”? British fishermen mixed

A heavy weather warning was announced this weekend in the North Sea. Rain and wind are already sweeping Peterhead and its pink granite dwellings. Located in the east of Scotland, the UK’s largest fishing port in terms of fish caught sees its boats returning for shelter. Except Peter Bruce, who will stay at sea until the last moment. ” We use so much gasoline to reach the whitefish fishing grounds that it is not financially worthwhile to come back for six to eight days.”,,, While Peter Bruce usually fills his holds with 50 tonnes of fish, he sometimes has to make do with 35 tonnes. Particularly since the 1is January. >click to read< 14:53

Stuck in a Dead End: Jersey fishermen give away lobsters after France bans them from selling in French ports

Fishermen at St Helier Port, which was blockaded by French rivals this week, said they had been left in a vicious cycle due to the dispute. France issued a legal notice to British fishermen last night that they were no longer welcome into French ports after one Jersey boat was threatened with violence and turned back. Fisherman Wayne Auger, 46, said: ‘Nobody really knows how this is going to end. ‘The French want to fish on our waters and had this amnesty from our government after Brexit. ‘But we can pay sums like £60,000 for a licence and they pay nothing to fish alongside us. ‘Many of us are running out of bait for the lobster pots and won’t be fishing because we can’t sell the fish to France and the local need isn’t that big.’ photos, >click to read< 14:15

British fishermen battle ‘codfathers’, quotas – and Brexit delay

On a crisp October afternoon in a neglected corner of southwest England, the catch of the day was being hauled ashore from the Wharton brothers’ boat. Lobster pots sat stacked around the harbour. Families strolled in the sunshine and seagulls screamed overhead.  More than three years after Britain voted to leave the EU, the fishermen of Ilfracombe were thoroughly fed up. “It’s a bloody disgrace,” >click to read< 06:59

Scallop wars: French fishermen pull plug on talks with UK rivals

French fishermen have broken off talks with British rivals for a new deal on access to scallop-rich waters in the English Channel, a long-simmering conflict that flared into a high-seas confrontation last month. Representatives from both sides had been meeting in London since last week to hammer out an accord that would stop smaller British boats from scooping up the prized mollusks outside the official fishing season. “It’s game over,” Hubert Carre, the head of France’s CNPMEM national fishing committee, told AFP. >click to read<10:30

Tensions escalate in scallop wars as French fishermen venture into British waters to net 44 bluefin tuna

The battle between British and French fisherman escalated again today after Gallic trawlers grabbed a giant haul of bluefin tuna off Jersey that their UK rivals must throw back. Two boats based in Normandy caught 44 of the valuable protected fish while hunting for bream off the Channel Islands – adding to already simmering tensions between the two nations. The tuna, each weighing between 50kg and 120kg and worth more than £100,000 in total, were then brought ashore at Granville in France to be sold.  British fishermen caught in the ‘Battle of the Scallops’ last week say the new development proves their French foes are hypocrites. >click to read<09:02

British fishermen tired of taking ‘scraps’ from Brussels are counting down the days to Brexit

They still like a Canadian down in Cornwall. The fishermen here all remember flying the Maple Leaf on their boats in solidarity back in 1995, when Canada and Spain went to battle on the high seas in the Turbot War. Back then, anyone taking on European Union boats accused of overfishing, especially Spanish boats, could count on the support of not just Cornish fishermen, but of the entire British fishing fleet. Canada accused Spanish boats of overfishing turbot using outlawed nets and actually fired shots across the bow of a Spanish trawler called the Estai in international waters off the coast of Newfoundland. Mounties and Fisheries Department officers seized the boat and arrested its captain. >click to read< 14:33

The understandable anger of British fishermen

When the fisheries-rich countries of the North Atlantic applied to join the EEC in the early 1970s, it was an opportunity for ministers in Brussels that was too good to miss. To the nervous embarrassment of the Dutch, a last minute deal was pushed through that bolted the resources of national fishing grounds onto the scanty treaty provisions that covered trade in fish produce. It was a shoddy fix and, it turned out, a major scandal at least for one of the applicant states. Norway’s fisheries minister resigned in protest, and the Norwegians voted against accession. But the UK did not. In 1973, the country joined the Brussels club. Ted Heath’s people accepted the stitch up as a political price worth paying – one of many, it might be said. And thus was created the original sin behind UK membership. >click to read<19:26

British Fishermen ‘offered 25 times a day’s wage to smuggle people into UK’

British fishermen have disclosed people smugglers have been offering them 25-times a normal day’s pay,  across the Channel. At least one former fisherman was so worried about the ease of smuggling people into the UK’s unwatched coves and bays that he wrote to the Home Office, only to be assured “everything is fine”. Home Office and Ministry of Defence officials will this week meet to discuss bolstering security in the Channel, after the rescue of 18 Albanians and two Britons from a sinking boat off the Kent coast last week raised fears about the scale of people smuggling along Britain’s coastline. “I have been approached in the past by a man who asked if I was interested in making more money,” said one fisherman, who asked not to be named. Read the rest here 22:22

Fishy EU goes fishing at Britain’s expense

The UK’s fishing industry is central to our national identity, and puts food on the table for millions. But Brussels wants to destroy it, and is doing a good job of doing so. The number of British fishermen has fallen by a quarter in the last two decades. Behind the scenes is the EU’s long-running (and much hated) Common Fisheries Policy which lays down the law for small time fishermen and huge trawlers alike, though the rules Read the rest here 07:50