Fishing industry: Heavy seas

Date: 03/01/04

Why the cost of fishing subsidies is rocketing as the industry disappears

THE deal on fishing quotas hammered out between European fisheries ministers just before Christmas was stringent enough to make fishermen angry but not to solve the problem of declining fish stocks. Nor will it resolve the paradox of fishing subsidies: while the number of fishermen working is falling, the amount of British taxpayers' money being spent on them is going up.

Fishing is disappearing. The shoals of white fish such as cod and haddock caught by British boats shrank from 457,000 tonnes in 1998 to 243,000 tonnes in 2002. The value of the British catch has fallen from about £690m ($1.1 billion) in 1994 to £550m in 2002. Boats have dwindled from 10,300 to 7,000 and the number of fishermen from 20,700 to 12,750.

Yet, while last year supporting fishing cost British taxpayers £110m, this year the bill is liable to be about £165m ($290m). That amounts to about £12,950 per fisherman, rather more than the £9,500 per farm worker that farming subsidies cost.

That's partly because the government is trying to reduce the number of fishermen by buying boats and licences: £56m is being spent on bribing skippers to quit. But it is also because bureaucrats' numbers do not fall alongside those of fishermen. Britain has four fisheries ministers and about 950 bureaucrats and researchers for an industry producing 0.06% of GDP. And even though the number of boats is still falling, the government still has to pay to keep an eye on the state of fish stocks and to police the fishermen to make sure they don't break the rules.

Not that it has much effect. Illegal fishing, along with the warming of the North Sea, is causing the fish to disappear. Twice as much illegal as legal cod may have been caught in 2001.

According to the Downing Street strategy unit, if the North Sea gets colder (a big if) and the cod return, catches will, at best, expand by about 30% by 2013. More likely, they will shrink by a further 20%. Fishermen seem to agree: the Scottish Fishermen's Federation says that a good many boats cannot put to sea because crewmen have gone to better-paid offshore oil work and skippers are discouraging sons from taking on the family boat.

Given that there are plenty of alternative jobs in the areas where fishing is concentrated, the social cost of a dying trade need not be too high. And there will be something to catch: a warmer North Sea means more prawns and sole. Nor have the fishermen's troubles had much impact on consumers. The price of cod has risen, but thanks to salmon farming and imports, Britons are eating 10% more fish than they were ten years ago.

Now cod farming is about to take off. The Norwegians claim that by 2013 their farms will be churning out five times more cod than the British fleet now catches. Fish farming is a lot cheaper to police as well.

Why the cost of fishing subsidies is rocketing as the industries disappears.

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