NEW marine protected areas – due to come into force in September – could “finish off” the maritime industry and lead to Jersey having to import seafood caught in local waters from France or the UK, a senior local fisherman has said.
Jersey Fishermen’s Association chair Steve Viney – himself a user of ‘mobile gear’ which is towed along the seabed to flip scallops into collecting bags – said that closing off areas would concentrate fishing into smaller areas.
However, Environment Minister Steve Luce said he has made concessions having listened to both Jersey and French fishers and if everyone is equally disgruntled, including environmentalists, then the new measures are probably in the right place.
The finalised boundaries of the new marine protected areas – which will increase the percentage of Jersey’s territorial waters under protection from trawling, netting and dredging from 6% to 21% from 1 September – have just been published.
The largest areas are around the Island, the Ecréhous and the Minquiers. By way of concession, Deputy Luce has slightly reduced the size of some areas but also delayed the creation of some MPAs until 2030, when the percentage under protection will increase to 23.5%.
Mr Viney said: “The protected areas are in the wrong areas. We will be displaced to other places that are less productive and we are going to have to increase our effort to be able to make it viable financially.
“Our feeling, as the mobile fleet, is that we haven’t been listened to. I know Deputy Luce has tried to make adjustments to try to appease the French and ourselves, but even with these, we are still going to be in the same situation when we get to 2030.
“We will be displaced from one area where mobile gear has worked for the last 200 years into areas where potentially there is going to be clashes with other methods of fishing, whether it be netting or potting.
“By moving us, our days are going to be longer, we are going to be further offshore, particularly in the winter, which raises the risk for some our smaller boats.”
He added: “What we are really looking for from government is proper support, compensation or decommissioning of boats because it is not going to be sustainable once we are squeezed into such a small area.
“It is a different case for the French, because they have their waters, our waters and Guernsey waters to choose from. But none of our boats have access into EU waters.
“The minister has consulted us but he is in a difficult position, trying to keep everyone happy. We are up against non-government organisations and other organisations which are constantly attacking us; it is a David and Goliath situation.
“Our fleet has shrunk so much that we are at a point where we feel as though we have become insignificant to the Island. But food security needs to be taken seriously, and we will come to a point where we are importing our own fish – that has been caught in our own waters – from France or the UK.
“We will get to a situation where there will not be enough fishermen to supply the local market and we will have, for example, Jersey lobster, caught by a French boat, imported into the Island.”
In response, Deputy Luce said that the nearly four-fold increase in protected areas from September was a major step forward and was in line with Jersey’s obligations under the OSPAR Convention to protect maerl beds, kelp forests and seagrass meadows.
He said: “I can’t deny the fact that the dredgers aren’t going to be able to access those [protected] waters anymore. We are going to push dredgers into smaller areas, if that’s what they choose to do, and we do know that in 2030 we will reduce the amount of places they can go further, and that will make it increasingly competitive for them.
“However, they have known this is coming for at least a couple of years and we have consulted with all parties extensively, including the French.
“Our recent amendments have been based on us using technology to see where boats have been fishing and an economic assessment of the amount of value and product being taken out of the areas we intended to close, which has been independently verified. The French did their own assessment too.”
Asked if the French would be happy, Deputy Luce said he doubted they would be totally content, adding: “But neither are the Jersey fishermen, nor will the environmentalists be happy because they would have expected me to protect much more from September. But it is the level of discontent that matters.”
“The French cannot say that we haven’t worked with them on this; similarly, we have met local fishers multiple times, including Mr Viney. We haven’t taken all their suggestions on board, but we’ve certainly listened to them and made some concessions. If everybody is equally unhappy, then we are probably about right.
“I’d like to believe that the French fishermen will think ‘okay, we’re not 100% happy with this, but we can see that the minister has listened to what we’ve said, and while we’ll be grumbling, we’ll carry on’.”
Head of Marine Resources Francis Binney said: “While some very productive grounds will be been lost [to mobile gear fishing], there are other productive grounds that we know that the industry relies heavily upon, where from the beginning, we weighed the economic argument more heavily, so left those areas predominantly for fishing, and there is a lot of areas that are still open.
“It is not that they are being pushed into tiny pockets; it is that they are being moved out of certain very productive pockets into broader areas. It may require a change in fishing technique, style and habits but it is still an economically and now environmentally sustainable business to run.”
The previous government had aligned itself to an international effort to reach ’30 by 30’ – 30% of the Island’s waters protected by 2030 – but Deputy Luce said that had never been a target of his.
He said: “I have never said we would adhere to that, but what I would say is I would like to think that by the time we get to 2030, we will have found some other areas that we could permanently put as marine protected areas.”
