Tag Archives: Brexit
Brexit: Fishermen on high alert as EU trade talks loom
The UK is leaving the EU on Friday night after which both sides will get ready to talk about its future relationship with the aim to conclude these negotiations by the end of the year. Documents from the European Commission show that the EU’s negotiation position clearly aims for continuing with the status quo of reciprocal access to fishing waters and resources. Meanwhile the Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar is quoted as saying that access to UK waters must continue for EU fishing boats if the UK wants a trade deal on banking. >click to read< 11:19
June Mummery declared EU nations are desperate for Britain’s fish and the Dutch will be finished without it.
Ms Mummery is the Brexit Party’s spokeswoman for fisheries and coastal issues. The Brexiteer also slammed other MEPs for forgetting what the job is and getting too comfortable. She stated that an MEP’s job is to represent the people who pay your wages. “These politicians they’ve got these jobs or they’ve had MEPs over in Europe who have had a nice comfy number and I’ll tell you it is comfy. “They have forgotten, they have forgotten what the job is. >click to read< 10:15
Fishing fleets deserve better than this if they’re not to be sunk by Brexit – Sir Barney White-Spunner
Few industries resonate more with the British public, and not least in the coastal towns and cities of Yorkshire, whose many marginal constituencies may prove an important battleground on December 12. Fishing may not be the force it once was, but many communities are still culturally and financially dependent on the vessels of all sizes that, among other things, provide our national dish and bring hundreds of jobs to the region. >click to read< 11:29
With the right team, we CAN get a good fisheries deal
John Ashworth writes an important take on how the renegotiated Withdrawal Agreement and Political Declaration cover fisheries. John is a hero of the Eurosceptic cause, and a critical figure in the campaign to win back British waters. Indeed, I well remember my first meeting in Parliament working for Sir Richard Body, because it was when Save Britain’s Fish campaigners came to discuss whether or not he should take back the whip. So it is with considerable reluctance that I write this. On this occasion, I think he may be wrong. >click to read< 13:56
Cod Crusader backing attempt to secure Brexit
One of the north-east duo who launched a campaign against savage fishing quota cuts 17 years ago this week has returned to the political battlefront to fight for Brexit. Carol Adams, formerly Carol MacDonald, said she was so fed up with the wrangling over the UK’s departure from the EU – and its much-despised Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) – that she was “coming out of retirement” despite recent ill-health. >click to read< 15:00
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
Fishing chief says No Deal only way to exit the EU on time – and save dying UK industry
Campaign group Fishing for Leave (FFL) is fighting to take back control of British waters and the fishing industry connected to it. FFL slammed the Yellowhammer document, that suggested around 300 EU boats would sail in British waters “illegally” after Brexit. The group have stuck by their mantra of a No Deal being the best way forward for the UK’s departure from the bloc. >click to read< 12:19
‘Britain ruled the waves. It was took off us by the EU . . . the dogs’
Leslie Garvan, a trawler owner from Kilkeel in Co Down who has done well out of fishing, wants to take back what he views as rightfully British. “Go back to f**kin’ [Horatio] Nelson, if you like. Britain ruled the waves then. It was took off us by the EU . . . the dogs,” says the 76-year-old, who has been going to sea from Kilkeel since 1959. Following Thursday’s Brussels deal, senior Northern Irish fishing figures are bullish. It will be for the EU to make concessions to negotiate access to UK waters. >click to read< 21:56
Fishermen urged to remove gear from non-UK waters ahead of Brexit
With two weeks until Brexit, fishermen who have deployed static gear in non-UK waters are being urged to get ready by removing it ahead of 23:00 hours on 31 October. The UK will become an independent coastal state after Brexit and there will be no automatic right to fish in the waters of EU or other states. An agreement on fishing has been agreed with Norway until the end of 2019. However, access to fish in EU waters will be a matter for future negotiation. >click to read< 11:50
Fishermen warn of ‘mayhem’ on seas in event of no-deal Brexit, concerns of conflict between trawlers from different countries
Fisherman Michael Cavanagh has no doubts about the potential for violence on the high seas in the event of a no-deal Brexit at the end of the month. The Greencastle-based skipper says that just after the initial March 29th deadline passed, an Irish crew fishing for crab off Scotland got a nasty shock, even though there had been an extension. “They went to haul their pots, but 400 of them had already been hauled and the eye (which crabs crawl through) had been cut out of all the pots. And it wasn’t Boris Johnson who did it.” >click to read< 16:14
Cornwall fishermen frustrated by Brexit surveillance changes
The Marine Management Organisation (MMO) is extending surveillance to “deter and detect illegal fishing by any vessels in English waters”. The extra checks are being done in port and at sea using boats and aircraft. Fishermen based in Newlyn, Cornwall said “we feel under so much scrutiny that people have given up”. The MMO said the changes would bring vessels under 10m in line with other fishing boats around the coastline. >click to read< 12:15
German fishermen’s scepticism towards EU impedes compliance with its regulations
Negative perception of a regulatory authority like the EU diminishes the honesty of those regulated, for example, that of fishermen. This is the conclusion drawn by researchers from the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv), the Leipzig University, the University of Hamburg, and the Kiel Institute for the World Economy from a game of chance experiment with EU-sceptic commercial fishermen and Brexit voters.,,, The experiment also revealed that the fishermen were more honest than students. >click to read< 13:07
How Britain’s tiny fishing industry became the symbol for Brexit
Just one week before the UK’s June 2016 Brexit referendum, a flotilla of 30 fishing boats made its way up the Thames towards Parliament House in support of leaving the EU. Led by pro-Brexit group Fishing for Leave, they had a message that has since become a much-repeated slogan for Brexit: leaving the European Union would provide a boost so strong to the nation’s fisheries that the entire UK would feel the benefits. Three years later, that message has only become stronger as Brexit negotiations continue. >click to read< 16:59
Promises of Brexit bonanza look fishy for seafood industry
Visions of richer harvests and of the once-mighty Royal Navy chasing European vessels out of now-shared waters appeal to some who work the seas from Scottish ports like Eyemouth, where old timers recall how the now largely empty harbor used to be so packed with trawlers they could walk from one side to the other without touching water. Aboard the “Janreen,” laden with crates of freshly caught langoustines, the anti-EU sentiment was clearly if also crudely expressed: A fist with the middle finger raised had been painted over an EU flag on the trawler’s front bulk-head. >click to read< 09:32
UK fishing town warns Boris Johnson over Brexit
Welsh fishmonger Lenny Walters has a warning for Prime Minister Boris Johnson as he celebrates his one-month anniversary in office on Saturday. If he goes back on his promise to deliver Brexit at any cost on October 31: “I think there will be riots.” “People are getting nasty,” the 67-year-old said while filleting monkfish with a razor-sharp knife. Locals see Johnson as their last great hope for reviving the local fishing industry. Their trust in his ability to do so is not terribly strong. “Do I have faith in Boris? I am not sure,” fish merchant Mark Davis said after a moment’s thought. >click to read< 16:09
Gerald Podschies: Angry Brixham trawler skipper calls for MP to ‘stand down and force a by-election’
I voted for you in the last general election,,, As you know, 54% of your constituents who voted in the referendum voted for Brexit. Not one kind of Brexit or another, just Brexit. Nothing more nothing less.,, In my 40 plus years as a fisherman, I have struggled under the jackboot of the CFP [Common Fisheries Policy]. Had to stand by as more and more European boats were granted access to our waters and decimated our fisheries whilst we had to go elsewhere. Watched as once thriving fishing ports we visited fell into decline and British boats were decommissioned, cut up for scrap or burnt. Powerful writing, Captain. >click to read< 09:26
Government says there is “a lot of uncertainty” over no-deal Brexit fishing patrols, email mistake reveals
The government has said there is “a lot of uncertainty” about the UK’s ability to patrol fishing waters in a no-deal Brexit, a memo has revealed. The document was emailed by mistake to the BBC. The memo said there are only 12 ships tasked to “monitor a space three times the size of the surface area of the UK”. It was mistakenly sent to the BBC from the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs while discussing media stories.
>click to read< 11:13
TRAWL-OUT WAR The French and British fishermen set for battle at sea if UK leaves the EU without a deal
In a coastal arc from Poole, Dorset, to Lowestoft in Suffolk, his co-op’s trawlers net tons of herring, plaice, sole, squid, cuttlefish, mackerel and red mullet, mostly for sale in France, Italy and Spain. On Boulogne-sur-Mer’s quayside, 32,000 tonnes of fish are landed each year and 5,000 jobs depend on the industry. But with a No-Deal Brexit on the horizon, Eric’s flotilla faces being banned from fishing in UK waters. “It will be a disaster for us,” he says. Britain will exit the Common Fisheries Policy at midnight on October 31 if Boris Johnson pushes through Brexit without a deal. >click to read<11:26
Three years on from the Brexit poll NI fishermen still determined to leave EU
For nearly 50 years Northern Ireland’s fishing industry has felt trapped by European Union restrictions on catch quotas and the rights of foreign trawlers to operate in local waters. But Britain’s decision to leave the EU and the effects it will have on local trawlermen now looms large on the horizon for many local skippers. Will Brexit ultimately allow our fleet to free itself from the net of Brussels bureaucracy? Or will local fishermen, who depend heavily on selling highly profitable local prawns to European countries, instead be left in deep water to face the introduction of potentially crippling new export tariffs? >click to read<17:01
Danish fishing communities fear Brexit could sink them
In the small fishing town of Thyboron on the northwestern coast of Denmark, many fishermen worry the British waters they have become increasingly dependent on will be out of reach when Britain leaves the European Union.,,, Since the 1970s, EU fishermen have had access to British waters under a deal, that many in Britain saw as unfair. Now some see Brexit as a chance to “take back control” of their waters and keep foreign vessels out. “This town could end up closing down because of Brexit,” says fisherman Michael Bork, 36, who has been fishing since the age of 10. 31 images>click to read<10:40
British cannot close off fishing waters post Brexit, says France
French Minister of Agriculture Didier Guillaume said Thursday it was “not possible” for Britain to close its waters to French and other EU fishermen after Brexit. “We do not accept that… that is not what we want,” Guillaume told a meeting of fisheries professionals in the Channel port of Boulogne. “We shall leave not one fisherman in difficulty because of Brexit,” concluded Guillaume, stressing that the French fishing industry should not suffer as a result of Britain’s departure from the bloc. >click to read<15:45
UK fishermen take to the water demanding speedy Brexit
NEWCASTLE: Starting off from North Shields, a small town in northeast England that has been a fishermen’s haven since 1225, a dozen ships sailed up the River Tyne to Newcastle on Friday demanding Brexit by March 29. Around 50 fishermen were on board the boats, which were festooned with banners reading “Save Britain’s Fish” and “You’ve Betrayed Us Again” – a day after MPs in Westminster voted in favour of delaying Brexit. The demonstration was to urge the country’s leaders to “ensure we leave on the 29th of March,” the currently scheduled date of departure, according to organisers. It came the day before former UKIP leader Nigel Farage starts out on his March to Leave, from nearby Sunderland to London. >click to read<17:08
European Fishermen Brace for Brexit – British fishermen may end up having Europe’s richest waters all to themselves. But who’s going to eat all the fish?
The Jannetje Cornelis fishing trawler was built two years ago in Spain. It’s owned by a company in the Netherlands and its crew is largely Dutch. Its home port and registration are in the English city of Hull. And it frequently sells its catch in France, from where it’s typically trucked to Holland for processing before being shipped to supermarkets in Italy and Spain. “We go where the fish is, and this time of year it’s in the English Channel,” skipper Peter de Boor says as a light snow falls over the docks of the French port of Boulogne-sur-Mer,,, >click to read<19:14
‘Fish don’t do borders’: Life on the Irish Sea after a hard Brexit
It is an overcast but dry December morning at Howth pier in north Co Dublin. John Lynch and his crew are preparing to take his trawler, the Eblana, out into the Irish Sea. The water is calm, for now. Our destination is a border, not a hard or soft border but a watery frontier. Lynch is bringing The Irish Times out to the Irish Sea border between what will be European Union and UK waters after Brexit. The boundary is just 30 nautical miles out, the equivalent of 34 miles on land. If the Brexit deal is not ratified by the time the UK is set to leave the EU on March 29th, 2019, this is the line beyond which Lynch must pull up his nets and stop fishing. >click to read<11:01
The calm before the storm – the fishermen waiting for Brexit
Newlyn looks the same as it always has. The Atlantic sweeps into the bay, gently rocking the boats moored there. The scent of fish rises from the docks and the market. St Michael’s Mount sits further round the bay, offering the perfect backdrop for a postcard. It doesn’t feel like a political hub, yet the town has been the subject of countless Brexit stories. It’s the perfect angle: a traditional industry which argues it’s been sold out again and again. Once more, it’s a bargaining chip on the negotiating table. And there are a lot of lives resting on that chip. Fishing was one of the strongest voices calling to leave Europe in 2016. Their demands were some of the clearest,,, >click to read<13:20
Fishermen ‘betrayed’ after Brexit talks on policy end in stalemate
Richard Brewer is a fifth-generation fisherman who has worked on the seas for more than 40 years. Today his trawler, the White Heather VI, is the last fishing boat left in the now eerily quiet Whitby harbour on the Yorkshire coast. “We used to be a big white fish port, it was a hive of activity, you could have come down here just six or seven years ago and you could barely move for all the forklift trucks shifting fish. Now you’ve just got a few lobster pots,” says 64-year-old Brewer. Britain’s fishing industry had been struggling to survive, and its last hope, according to most of the nation’s fishermen, was Brexit. >click to read<14:49
‘We want a better deal’: talking Brexit aboard a fishing trawler
Crystal Sea is a 20-metre twin-rig stern trawler, one of the bigger boats operating out of Newlyn in Cornwall. Twin rig means she drags two nets, side by side. She catches a mix of fish, up to 30 different species, operating anywhere between six and 120 miles from home. In the four days I am on board – to get a Brexit perspective from 49° 48’N, 5° 48’W and thereabouts, as well as to get some idea of what this very tough job involves – we are mainly between 10 and 20 miles from shore. >click to read<11:12
Brian Wilson: The scales must fall from our eyes
The Scottish fishing industry is in the hands of a wealthy few – but will Brexit, whatever form it takes, change anything, asks Brian Wilson Let’s be honest – the vast majority know little about the fishing industry while evincing general sympathy towards those who go to sea in order to put food upon our tables. When fishermen protest about the Common Fisheries Policy they tend to benefit from that empathy because it is easier to concur that “Brussels is to blame” than look for villains closer to home. >click to read<16:03
Fisheries bill: Changes would allow small vessels to spend more days at sea and land more catch
Fishing rights should be redrawn to give a higher quota to smaller vessels after Brexit, the Labour party is to propose in an amendment to the government’s fisheries bill. The changes would allow small boats to spend more days at sea and land more catch than they do at present, though catches would still be subject to negotiation with the EU on common fishing grounds. Under current allocations, two-thirds of the UK’s quota of fish under the EU’s common fisheries policy is controlled by three major multinational companies. >click to read<11:27
Brexit doubt and dismay replace optimism in fishing villages
Fishing communities were among the strongest supporters of the UK leaving the EU ahead of the 2016 referendum, but on Scotland’s north-east coast the Brexit wind is shifting. On a dark November morning in Peterhead, Britain’s largest fishing port, the optimism among fishermen and traders has been replaced by doubt and dismay. “I think we’ve been sold down the river once again. It’s an absolute disgrace. We trusted these politicians,” said Gary Mitchell,,,, >click to read<10:41
