THE government’s plan to prevent French fishing boats depleting stocks in Jersey’s waters is ‘bordering on the naive’, according to local fishermen – as temporary licences allowing European vessels access to local waters expire next week.
Jersey Fishermen’s Association president Don Thompson said he feared the 136 French boats licensed to fish in the Island’s territorial waters might decrease in number over time but retiring boats would be replaced by larger, more efficient vessels.
These boats would quickly be able to wipe out rich grounds around the Island, such as scallop beds near the Minquiers, leaving Jersey fishermen with little to catch, Mr Thompson told the Environment, Housing and Infrastructure Scrutiny Panel yesterday.
Jersey’s policy for when fishers want to replace their vessels is to be updated as part of post-Brexit fishing regulations. The government hopes to introduce the new measures at the same time that it renews permits for French fishermen, allowing them to work in Jersey’s 800sq-miles of territorial waters.
For the first time, conditions about the ‘nature and extent’ of fishing activity will be applied to these licences, which will be issued on Wednesday. The nature and extent clauses govern catch limits for individual boats.
It is these conditions – first applied in April 2021 – which prompted a fleet of around 70 French boats to protest outside the Harbour a few days later while two Royal Navy warships kept a close watch.
Almost two years later, Jersey officials are confident – following many months of diplomacy and an improvement in the flow of information on past fishing activity which defines what conditions are set – that there will not be a repeat of events in 2021 which received worldwide attention and prompted a French minister to threaten to cut off Jersey’s supply of electricity.
One outstanding issue that the Island seeks to resolve is what happens when a French fisher with a Jersey licence retires or wants to upgrade their boat.
Last month, Environment Minister Jonathan Renouf published a vessel replacement policy, which allows a new boat to be 10% more powerful and 20% heavier than the one it replaces.
However, to avoid ‘creep’ with every new vessel, any increase must be based on the engine size and tonnage of the original qualifying boat.
Earlier this month, the States Assembly approved these rules in principle, but the Scrutiny Panel, which is led by Deputy Steve Luce, asked to have a closer look at the regulations in detail.
Addressing the panel, Mr Thompson said: ‘The fundamental principle at stake here is can we decouple fishing capacity from catch? The [Environment] Minister says you can, but I say we cannot.
‘He says that the tonnage doesn’t matter because we can monitor what is caught but that almost borders on naivety.’
Mr Thompson said that the government’s estimates of the amount caught by French boats were far lower than the reality.
He added that – up until Christmas, at least – a significant number of smaller French boats did not have technology on board which allowed Jersey to track their movements, and therefore monitor what, where and when they were working.
However, addressing the panel later in the morning, Deputy Renouf said that Mr Thompson’s concerns were unfounded as each French boat was limited in what it could catch by the conditions of its permit.
He added that French law dictated that its fleet had to be fitted with a tracker and Jersey would introduce legislation later this year making it a requirement for any boat fishing in its waters to have one.
Addressing Mr Thompson’s concerns about the proposed vessel replacement policy, Deputy Renouf said: ‘If there is an increase in tonnage or engine power for one boat, there has to be a reduction somewhere else because there is a cap on the total.
‘Each permit will also dictate exactly what each fisher can and cannot catch. For the first time in a long time, Jersey is taking control of its own waters; this is a much better system than we had before.’
