Covid 19 and Brexit

It’s clear that the fishing community on our West coast is facing a crisis from which many businesses will never recover.

Even before the virus arrived there were no indications that anything serious was being done regarding the fisheries negotiations between the UK and the EU. Today the reliable Tony Connelly of RTE has confirmed that nothing whatsoever has been done to date. Remember, the UK’s self-imposed time scale of 30 June is just eleven weeks away - eleven weeks ago we were celebrating Rabbie Burns; it seems like yesterday. There’s no sign of either side seeking an extension.

The issues peculiarly affect the smaller, inshore fishing fleet and the non quota fishery. This page has already explored questions regarding quota - see the post from 16 February, for example. In the absence of anything radical happening very soon my guess is that the big companies that currently own quota will see very little change after 30 June. Most, perhaps 80%, of English quota and a fair percentage of the Scottish is owned by entities from outside the UK, also many vessels are owned by limited companies that are in turn owned by other companies registered abroad and often in anonymous tax-haven jurisdictions. Legally their holdings of quota have effectively become rights of property and we can assume that the owners won’t have them interfered with readily.

Oddly, given the enthusiasm some hard line Brexiters have for rejecting everything “foreign” one avenue of recourse would be under the European Convention on Human Rights:

“Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 – Right to property

1. Every natural or legal person is entitled to the peaceful enjoyment of his possessions. No one shall be deprived of his possessions except in the public interest and subject to the conditions provided for by law and by the general principles of international law. 2. The preceding provisions shall not, however, in any way impair the right of a State to enforce such laws as it deems necessary to control the use of property in accordance with the general interest or to secure the payment of taxes or other contributions or penalties.”

Subsection 2 means that you are entitled to receive proper compensation if your rights are taken away in pursuance of the policy of a State.

For the West coast fleet matters are very different. Prior to the arrival of Covid 19 it was already clear that the great majority of inshore vessels were facing supply chain disruption and costs due to Brexit. Those issues have all been rehearsed before on this page and elsewhere. Briefly, they include the costs and practical problems with certification and problems freighting highly perishable fresh fish and shellfish to the markets around the Mediterranean and elsewhere.

Because there have as yet been no negotiations the position regarding re-registering and shifting your boat to Northern Ireland seems to remain a feasible option, for anyone willing to move, but it’s unlikely to be taken up until matters are finalised - there’s too much upheaval and any deal may change things.

Two weeks ago the Scottish Government announced the rescue package for the under 12 metre fleet. A total of £5 million is available and, it seems, has mostly been allocated on the basis of a payment of one half of two months wages/profit based on last year’s fishing, full time fishers only, with a maximum of £27,000 per business. Split among 650 businesses the average payment would be just over £7,500. A further £10 million is apparently available for fish processors. Scottish Government can only distribute the money allocated from the total UK fund and it’s obvious that these payments won’t hold off starvation for very long. Families are already suffering, desperately.

It doesn’t look as if anything will change soon and as noted above for fishing Brexit is settled on 30 June. It seems unlikely that the boats currently tied up, with crews in many cases looking for other work or having returned home, will return to sea anytime soon.

There are signs on social media of attempts being made along the coast of cottage distribution networks being established. Owners of some vessels are trying to set up local sales operations, while residents in some areas are setting up joint purchasing efforts. With the best of intentions these efforts can only nibble at the problem.

For decades almost all of our most precious shellfish has gone to Spain and France. Will we all start to change our eating habits and start eating lobsters on a regular basis? Will we see velvet crabs, a major export to Spain, as a food stuff? Prices are said to have plummeted; will they revive to levels that make fishing worthwhile?

Please feel free to comment on these issues. It’s important that all ideas are aired.

Finally, it seems that the aquaculture industry may not suffer as much as its owners are currently suggesting. Certainly there’s been a catastrophic drop in exports to places like China, but these will recover post Covid 19 and will be unaffected by Brexit. Domestic sales will be booming, especially if the collapse in the seagoing fleet makes salmon the only fish on supermarket shelves.

The companies concerned, almost all hugely wealthy Norwegian or multi-national owned, will assuredly survive. Almost nothing has been published by Scottish Government about the extent to which these non-taxpayer giants may also benefit from any rescue money going.

SEPA has awarded the fish farms relief from the maximum biomass limits that are in place currently to restrict the amounts of waste material that can be dumped on our seabed. Perhaps more worryingly a number of farms are also being allowed to use more of the deadly Emamectin Benzoate, that SEPA has been anxious to see removed entirely from the water column and seabed. It’s used to kill the sea lice that predate on the salmon, but is also fatal to lobsters and other crustaceans and stays active for many years.

We could be looking eventually at a seascape that’s devoid of activity apart from industrial level aquaculture, taking place over a polluted, toxic seabed devoid of wildlife.