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The coastal fishery and the actors  

Speech from Kurt Bertelsen Christensen, Living Sea Denmark.

"Bread and Fish" seminar Ratzeburg, Germany August 2006 

First of all thank you for giving me this opportunity to talk about a world very close to my heart. I will try to give you information from the fishery sector, but it’s not my overall approach. I am sailor, fishermen, sea environmentalist and today I will also be lawyer and advocate for the small scale coastal fishery. I believe we don’t need more knowledge about the fishery; you know that a fishing hook is friendlier to nature then a beam trawler using 5000 HK and to trawls of a common weight of 40 tons. We know that way are we giving the quotas to beam trawlers, by taking the fish away from the coastal fishermen, and in the same time give the trawlers oil for the lowest price possibly, in EU? This is the questions to day. 

I will start with the claim that the coastal fishermen world wide belong to the group of indigenous people. In Living Sea we define coastal fishermen as fishermen using smaller vessels, fishing near the coast and home for unloading their catches every day. The coastal fisheries marked are normally the local fresh fish marked. It's a rough definition, but we can do it very concrete: We simply decide that the coastal fishing boat is max. 12 meter; have weigh more than 10 ton; the motor is not more then 200 HK; has to fish inside a zone (like on Faeroe Island) and they have to unload the catches every day. This and more criteria can be set up, and if we and the fishermen accept these criteria, they can have a license and be coastal fishermen. Not different from what we due it with organic agriculture.

The coastal small scale fishery is thousands of years old; the modern fishing industry is built up after 1945. The offshore fishery is done with bigger and bigger vessels longer out and deeper down in the open sea. They can stay on the sea for weeks and this type of fishing can't operate without a modern and high technological build up on land fishing industry, an industry that can get and treat big landings at one time. The overall problem is that the inshore and the offshore fishery fishing mostly also fish on the same fish spices under a quota system.

One important characteristic for the coastal fishery is that the coastal fishermen are and have to wait on until fish is reedy and coming to the shore, for eating and breading. The inshore fishery is therefore a season fishery; waiting for the fish coming in to shallow water and the seashore; the offshore fishery with the big vessels fish everywhere, all the year around. The offshore fishery catches the fish outside the seasons, also when the fish quality is low. The plaice is a good example. Plaice have the highest quality in the autumn period 1-2 month before breading. They are fed and the taste is excellent, and in the same time the plaice is coming to the sea shore. Now a day the offshore fishery is taking the plaice all around the year and we as consumers have the possibility to eat plaice even in the winter time when the plaice are not eatable.

The coastal fishermen are directly connected to nature and the rhythm in nature. And I will claim in general, that the coastal fishery in our modern world to day is in the best balance with nature that you can expect from a modern occupation/trade to day. There are examples to the contrary, but this example doesn’t change the fundamental claims, that the coastal fishermen also to day are fully living from nature.

Therefore the coastal fishermen in our modern world belong to the groups of indigenous people.

I don’t forget that to days coastal fishery is also a modern business activity. Nowadays they have fibre glass boats filled with all types of modern equipment and tools. But all this doesn’t question the fundamental status; just like it does not change the status of the Amazon Indians as indigenous people when they start to use computer and Internet.

As well as the more traditional agriculture, the coastal fishermen are taking over fishing, vessels and tools, and not to forget knowledge, from fathers or other family members, and back in history it has been done that way. The life of coastal fishermen is always in smaller communities. If they belong to a bigger harbour, they get a small part of the harbour for them self.

The overall argument from my side is that the coastal fishermen, this group of people have inherited the historical right to the nature and the fish in the sea. Like the Indians in the Amazon rainforest have historical rights to their very special life in the rainforest, the coastal fishermen in our world also have the prescriptive right to water, fish and life on the coast.

The bigger and more and more capital requiring fishing industry, and the vessels, also has rights, but their rights to the fish in the sea are comparable with the rights of shipyards to new orders and public aid and likewise the agricultures rights to financial support and subsidies from EU.

We can and we did in Denmark, decide politically to stop all aid to shipyards and let the yards in the Far East build our tankers and ships. Likewise we can do the same in the fish industry. We can decide that the fishermen have to catch the fish, without any national and EU financial support. To day we talk seriously about stopping the aid to the EU farmers, and we know that it will give many farmers big problems, but we do it. And in some year the support for agriculture will stop.

So I say stop all aid to the fishery, let the fishery develop it self in the same speed as the fish in the sea and the fish marked, and the skills of fishermen allow fishery to be developed. Public financial support to the trades and industries in our modern world is not good, but public financial support to purely nature depended industry trade as the fishery in our world, is decidedly of evil.

Sad that I believe that coastal fishery and the indigenous people need support – also economical support. But this support is concretely directed to human needs. And there is no link between this support and the aids we give to the industries. This production, trade and business living, not from production, but in realty from the extermination of others, fighting on the global marked today.

We fully understand that there is a world between the indigenous trade activities and the modern industry and trade today. That’s way we to day have started to take care of the indigenous, it’s the logical conclusion. I understand that it’s very difficult for us “who talk about indigenous” to comprehend, that in a modern fashionable society like the European, we still have groups of people belonging to the indigenous people.

We understand the Amazon Indians, and we understand that there is world between citizens from Berlin and the fishermen growing up on Rügen Island to be fishermen like his father and grandfather before him. But from Denmark I have the experience that it’s no problem for the government, experts and civil servants working with developing aid to Africa, to demand the authorities in the African countries to protect and support the coastal fishery on the coast of Vest Africa before these countries can receive developing aid for the fishery. But the same government have no understanding for the coastal fishery in Denmark.

Granted that there are these differences, how should we in modern democratic Europe deal with these differences between the fishermen living for many generations of fishery and the people living far away form it? Again in Denmark I have disputes with professor’s claming that we all live in the same democracy and that if we the majority decide to give the quotas to the industrialised fishery, the coastal fishermen just have to accept it. Yes I agree it’s possibly and in fact this is also how the remaining coastal fishermen live to day.

But accepted this we can also choose to take care of our coastal fishery. My argument is that we have to take special care of the coastal fishery. We have to do it for the fishermen themselves, but also for our selves and not least in the interests of a future sustainable management of nature and the nature resources. To do this we have to accept that the future fishery and the coastal fishery is our choice. It’s clear to me that the coastal fishermen don’t have any choice themselves anymore. They are fully and completely altogether under our mercifulness. It's scary, but it’s the fact today. So also here there is a destiny partnership between our coastal fishermen and the indigenous people.

The coastal fishermen try to talk to our reason, but in the same time our reason tells us: Yes it’s a sad story, but it’s the same story from the all the other trade and business activities, the small grocery; the small farmer etc. way shot it be so different in the fishery? It’s correct but I have no doubt anymore that the coastal fishermen a telling us the true. They are telling us that most of the modern fisheries to day are a mistake, it’s a failure. And please this statement from me has nothing to due with romance, small boats, places etc. its common sense. We in the modern world have to integrate the coastal fishery, not the other way around.

My first premise, to refuse the modern fishery, mostly trawling, are build on the claim that the modern trawl fishing, catching more then 80 % of all the fish in EU, will not have been in the fishery today without the quotas and public aid, first of all government support to the fuel. The quota politic is a failure in itself everyone recognize this. The premises for the quotas in the regulation are that the management know how many fish we have in the sea every year; how many fish the fishermen catch. But the only knowledge we have is how many fish the fishermen unloads. The quota politic is an artificial monster. So the logical question is why don’t we change the course of the fishery?

There is a reason way we don’t due it. Today the fisherman belong to a small minority under the relatively big umbrella we call the “Fish industry”. In Denmark there are more people involved in the activities to understand; describe; controlling; the management; making projects and giving financial support etc. then active fishermen. Lets just for a moment imagine that we before 2010 have solved most of the problems in fishery. We have removed up to the needed 50 % of the capacity, by taking away the oil support what will happen? You se  it’s an impossibly situation, so therefore we will continued to produce the needed problems to get the hole machinery to work

That’s way we from Living Sea since 2000 have ended our fight for common sense in the fishery management. Now we are appealing to the politician, to the civil servant and all living from fishery to day: We recommend: Split the fishery up in to divisions: An inshore and out shore fishery. The problems in the out shore will continue until they have exterminated themselves, so there will be a lot to do in that sector. But give the inshore fishery a chance to survive. It’s impossibly for them to day without support and there one quotas and regulation. It’s our duty to take care, protect and also preserve all the people and think in nature that we in the modern world know we are destroying today. Let’s protect the small scale inshore fishery before it’s too late.