From The Danish Society For A Living Sea – headquarters at M/S Anton, Strandgade 100, Trangraven, Copenhagen, Denmark.

- Danish fishermen oppose the superficial conflict between European national fishery interests.

In Lemvig, one of the many Danish fishery harbours that have undergone dramatic set backs during the past decades, local fishermen shake their head at the current political debate about the sustainability in  European fishery: While the discussion focuses more and more on which national industrial fleet should have more access to the decreasing common stocks, the real conflict in fishery is repressed – the highly industrialized and capitalized fishery is effectively and dramatically exterminating the real fishery (fishery conducted in accordance with the natural ecological conditions, and with a diversity of products and lively harbours as the results).

This proces has been going on already several decades, following a perverse logic: Ruin the small, decentral and labour intensive manyfold of vessels in the European harbours, and let the floating factories take over with their ecologically hazard methods and gastronomicaly as well as culturaly impoverished production. The industrialized fishery, be it in Spain or in Denmark, has already proven to be unsustainable, unattractive and without perspective. On gloomy days, the Lemvig fishermen prognose that ”at first they will ruin us – then they will ruin themselves”. It is imperative that this development be reversed!

The oversimplified antagonism between the Southern and the Northern fisheries obfuscates the fact that we now face the highly important choice: Do we want a continued capitalization and industrialization in European fishery, or do we want a varied, lively and ecologically, and hence long term economically, sustainable fishery?

We believe that European fishery should have as its overall aim to keep as many fishermen as possible in the fishery trade. Therefore the efforts to reduce the total fleet must be directed at the vessels and methods, which have beyond any reasonable doubt caused the overfishing of the stocks to a catastrophic level. Plaice, e.g., should be caught in staying nets and Danish seine, not in vastly energy consuming trawls (esp. beam trawl) that brutally destroy the sea bottom and endanger the stocks. But there is an urgent need of political initiative to make this possible. As things are going, extremely costly vessels (economically as well as ecologically) are turning fishery into industry, and the foundation of thousands of real fishing vessels into mere memories of the past.

Skipper and chairman of Living Sea Gunnar Jacobsen says: ”I would like to continue my seine fishery, but the portions have become too small for me to live from it, and therefore I am now also forced to apply for financial support to terminate the fishery from my boat.” His cutter, E 230 Merkur, can not be converted into other types of fishery, and he is therefore about to give up the unequal competition with new modern trawlers with huge engine power that go out and vacuum clean the sea of plaice, even before he is able to launch his fishery in April.

The Danish Society For A Living Sea now launches its sailing campaign with exhibitions, meetings and debates during the Danish chairmanship of the European Union, in support of the many European fishermen, and in opposition to the (especially Northern European) fishery industry, which is aiming at destruction of the fishery, we all care about – be it in Spanish or Greek fishery communities, in the outskirts of France, the minor towns of Denmark or the age old traditional British harbours.

We demand – on behalf of European tax payers – that a fishery reform in the EU takes as its aim to keep as many fishermen in the trade as possible. The fishermen do not need to be trained for other trades. They need a rational and a radical decommission of the vast trawlers that catch 80 % of the fish in Northern European waters – and a clear political will to sustain the variety, the quality and the pride of the European fishery trade.

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For more information: Contact M/S Anton at phone +45 51 24 57 20 or + 45 51 24 82 20 – spokesman Kurt B. Christensen and skipper Henning Thoegersen. Or visit our homepage at www.levende-hav.dk

The Danish Society For A Living Sea is an NGO working with sea environment and fishery. It counts among its members fishermen, biologists, and fish consumers.