A High Court judge has dismissed Blue Marine Foundation’s judicial review of the way the majority of fishing quotas are allocated above scientific advice, leading to the collapse of fish populations and the decline of fishing communities. Blue Marine will seek to appeal the judgment handed down today.
Charles Clover, co-founder of Blue Marine, said: “Is it right or legal that the entire adult spawning stock of a fish can be sacrificed, just so the fishing fleet can go on fishing for other species? That is utterly perverse when there are other alternatives, such as area closures, which would grow that stock for the future.
“This judgement has condoned irresponsibility. It says that ministers have the discretion to make bad and irresponsible decisions like this, without proper justification, even if they are manifestly against the public interest, against those of the natural world and even against the stated objectives of the Fisheries Act.
“Either the Fisheries Act 2020 is a very bad law or it is not being applied properly. We still believe it is the latter. We are going to persist in asking the courts as to whether what has been going on is a legal and responsible way of managing public assets or wild animal species.”
Tom Appleby, head of legal affairs at Blue Marine said: “This is a challenging day for the health of our seas and for jobs in what’s left of the UK fishing industry.
“The court has upheld a process where decisions over the public’s fishery have led to its deliberate and reckless overexploitation, through quotas being consistently set in excess of scientific advice. Even in the short term, this is bound to lead to stock collapse.
“This year, yet again, despite explicit policies to the contrary, fishing quotas for 54% of species failed the government’s own metrics for sustainability – including quotas for staple stocks such as mackerel. The continuation of these sorts of decisions, year on year, has collapsed cod, whiting and now pollack – the last major stock on which the inshore fleet depended.
“We have lost nearly 30% of the jobs in the fishing industry since 2016, as a direct result of decisions like these. The UK is now down to around 6,500 active full-time jobs. The entire industry would fit into the Dover Athletic football stadium.
“This judgment seems to indicate that there is no single decision where we can hold ministers and the civil service to account under the Fisheries Act, there is no duty to give us members of the public any indication of how these (often bizarre) decisions come about beyond the merest smattering of random detail, and that somehow it is rational to make decisions which inevitably will collapse stocks.
“Blue Marine is a charity and must act in the public interest; our role is to protect both the environment and the fishing communities who depend upon it. Without fish there are no fishermen. We have no doubt that our next duty is to appeal this decision. These practices cannot be permitted to continue.”
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