Coastal Fishing

[Paul D]

Annette Brooke asked the following question of Jonathan Shaw :-

 

Annette Brooke (Mid Dorset & North Poole, Liberal Democrat) | Hansard source

 

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what progress has been made in the introduction of measures to restrict inshore netting in order to improve stocks for recreational anglers.

 

Jonathan R Shaw (Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Marine, Landscape and Rural Affairs) and Minister for the South East), Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) | Hansard source

 

Last year I announced a review of inshore netting restrictions and bass nursery areas, for the benefit of both inshore recreational angling and commercial fishing. I am also currently consulting on a draft recreational sea angling strategy which considers a package of measures for the development of recreational sea fishing. Once this consultation closes on 31 March 2008, DEFRA officials will meet stakeholders to agree how to take forward the review of inshore netting and bass nursery areas. The Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (Cefas) has been commissioned to conduct various studies to help progress these reviews.

 

[Fugazi]

I suspect that after a few more years of commissioning studies to decide if there is a need to commission another study, the final study will inevitably conclude that the marine bio mass diversity has reached critically low, non viable levels. At this point it will be blindingly obvious to all at DEFRA that there is an urgent need to commission a study into what went wrong. However, in the meantime it will be necessary to introduce sea fishing licences for leisure anglers in order to fund these studies, reduce global warming and protect the environment.

 

Gordon H

[Brian]

Gordon

 

The sad thing is, you're probably right.