“Making of a MONSTER”

Most,  if not all successful attempts at reform making starts between the ears, that is with a change of mindset. So I ask myself  repeatedly how can it be at all possible to make the necessary changes to the CFP,  when the rule makers themselves,  seem to be lacking the will to change the dynamics of management. Fisheries management is not just about the management of fish resources, but also that of the interactions, of those that manage and harvest them. The CFP and it,s reform has become more and more about the increasing number of high profiled people involved in and around  the fishing industry,s nightmare  “reality soap “, the CPF. The British fisherman has over many years become marginalised, and played over the sidelines. The recent “Fish fight campaign”, along with other social medias has certainly put the insane mandatory practice of discarding marketable fish, straight into the eye of the public – and it hurts! The campaign has  done little to help the plight of the fisherman,- in reality it has made the situation far worse –  this being reflected by amongst other things, the ridiculously imbalanced cod and haddock quota proposals for the West of Scotland. The fisherman is portrayed in many medias as a “market driven despot” with little or no concern for the environment. The situation being made no better when a high ranking industry leader is quoted in the medias as to saying”    “a state of anarchy” still exists in parts of the fishing industry where everyone was out for what they could get from a diminishing stock “. Non compliance is often given by the Commission as being one of the reasons for the failure of the (flawed) CPF.

Minister Damanaki,s whirlwind tour of Europe aimed at selling the CPF reform package of bio-socio sustainability should be easy to sell – there again the means to achieve it will  be far from that. So where is all this going? one might ask – I get the feeling that the industry has embarked down a road it should not have. The move of focus from TAC to total removals of resources MSY ,and the suggestion of a catch credits system in combination with a discard ban – CCTV monitoring and total compliance, will be an ultra thin line for the industry to walk. The fall height is great.  The industry has willingly taken a huge “leap of faith”into the mouth of the “monster”, and not knowing that it will take more than just faith to give them the desired deliverance. It will take nothing but a “divine intervention” to sort out this mess – a mess where fishermen more and more often get the feeling of  dis empowerment and resignation. A mess, where some of  the fishing industry,s “corridor walkers” have not knowingly, become assimilated into the belly of the monster through years of numerous “consultations” with the management and the EU Commission. And to what avail?

Fisheries politics at EU top level, has become more than just the fish resources and the communities that depend on them – it,s become more of a reality soap, where face saving, being seen as to “doing something”,  personal prestige and “monument” building is the name of the game. Had a fisherman managed his family – wife, children and pets in the same manner the CFP has managed the European fisheries and there dependants, then surely the social services and child welfare, would have put the family  under administration.  The European fishing industry needs a divine intervention to change the dynamics of fisheries management – it needs a  “NANNY 911”.