Britain's Secret Seas – instructive series on BBC iPlayer

First broadcast BBC Two, 8:00PM Sun, 8 May 2011 – available until 8:59PM Sun, 5 Jun 2011
With
- explorer Paul Rose, former base commander of British Antarctic Survey, has scuba dived "all around the world";
- marine biologist Tooni Maahto;
- journalist and underwater archaeologist Frank Pope.


1. Giants of the West

"In the first programme of the series, the team uncovers the world of the giants that reside in and on our western seas.
A few metres off the Cornish shore, the team study Britain's largest fish, the basking shark. Despite the fact that they grow up to ten metres long, little is known about them, which makes effective conservation very difficult. In an exceptional encounter, the team is surrounded by up to 12 sharks as they feed on microscopic plankton.
Their shark expedition then takes them north to the Isle of Man. Working alongside local scientists, they take shark DNA samples using a kitchen scourer in order to assess the genetic health and long-term fitness of these great leviathans. The team also runs into a giant swarm of jellyfish.
In the waters of South Wales, Tooni encounters an invading army of giant spiny spider crabs. These creatures boast a leg span of over a metre across, and Tooni reveals that they come into the shallow waters every year to find a mate.
On Lundy Island off the Devon coast, Frank assesses whether the island's protected underwater No Take Zone could be used as a template to establish a nationwide network of marine nature reserves right around our island.
Frank also reveals how Great Britain still relies on the sea to import goods. He boards one of the biggest transatlantic container ships in the world, The Atlantic Companion, as the vast ship brings its cargo into Liverpool Docks.
In treacherous waters off the Isles of Scilly, Paul dives the largest shipwreck in British waters to assess the legacy of the worst ecological disaster to affect our shores so far; the ill-fated Torrey Canyon oil tanker."

2. The Wild North

"In the second programme in the series, explorer Paul Rose, marine biologist Tooni Mahto and maritime journalist Frank Pope explore the wild seas around Scotland.
The team travel to Bass Rock, one of the largest gannet colonies in the world. They are there to try and find out why when most British seabird populations are in decline, the northern gannet is bucking the trend. Tooni helps scientists who are using GPS trackers to discover the extraordinary distances gannets can fly in the search for food. Paul goes beneath the waves to witness the amazing diving ability of Britain's largest seabird.
Tooni joins a scientist in St Andrews Bay in search of the bottlenose dolphin to find out why dolphins have unique signature whistles - could they be names as we know them? She also takes Paul on a spectacular night dive at St Abbs in search of the amazing sea creatures that fluoresce beyond our visual spectrum. And intriguingly, this discovery has been used to help study cancerous cells.
Expedition leader, Paul Rose, meets the hidden heroes of the Royal Navy. They are on a special clearance mission around Garvie Island at Cape Wrath. The Navy divers go underwater clearing live 1,000lb unexploded bombs dropped by aircraft during training exercises. These are modern and extremely powerful weapons that must be detonated with explosives - underwater.
We have over 25,000 wrecks around the British Isles. These wrecks are a rich archaeological record of our maritime heritage, but sadly they are being damaged by trawlers, souvenir hunters and the forces of nature. Frank and Paul Rose go to the Sound of Mull, to see first-hand what can be done to preserve the history locked away in these relics."

Deepwater Horizon Blowout – one year on: what impacts?

One year later, gulf oil disaster still puzzles scientists

It may be decades before the scope of the disaster is known, they say

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/US/04/20/gulf.oil.environment.recap/index.html?hpt=C1 

(CNN) — One year after the chocolaty crude started spewing out of the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, leading to the largest accidental oil spill in history, scientists say they’re still trying to piece together what’s happening to the environment.
Some potential clues about the impact of the spill have made themselves known: dead baby dolphins and sea turtles; oiled brown pelicans; fish with strange sores; sticky marsh grasses; tar balls on beaches.
[The authors don't mention oysters whose shells crumble like a sticky, gooey mess, as shown on BBC TV.]
But the big picture hasn’t come into focus yet.
Did the oil spill shatter the Gulf’s food chain? Will fish have trouble reproducing because of exposure to hydrocarbons? What did those dispersants, which were supposed to break up the oil, do to the ecosystem on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico? Or did the Earth already heal itself?
Scientists can’t say for sure, and it may be years or decades before some of these nagging questions about the Gulf oil disaster’s impact will be answered with any sort of authority or clarity, they said in interviews.
The lab geeks know this is frustrating both for journalists and the public, but they beg for our patience as they try to put this enormous puzzle together.
“Scientists have two things that probably aggravate the lay public. One of them is ‘I wish I had more data’ and the other is ‘I wish I had more funding,’” said Christopher Reddy, a senior scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, who has been studying the impact of the spill. “But, in this case, prudence trumps urgency — or, in your case, the curiosity of your readers.”
He added: “We have thousands of samples still in the queue to be analyzed or haven’t come out. It may take many years to determine whether some (particular) species was affected. You just have to be prudent at this point. The one year anniversary is a day for mourning and reflection; it’s not a day for science.”
In this relative data vacuum, politicians, pundits and science-types have spun stories about the impact of the oil spill on the natural environment.
There’s the bacteria-ate-the-oil-so-everything’s-fine storyline, as offered by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. That federal agency in November issued a much-disputed report saying the vast majority of the oil in the Gulf had evaporated, dispersed or was eaten by microorganisms.
At the other end of the spectrum, it’s the eco-pocalypse angle, as supported by scientists who, especially in the early days of the spill, said oil could coat Louisiana marshes and kill off most everything in the path.
“There may be tidbits of truth amongst all these topics,” Reddy said.
“The unfortunate thing is that we can’t put the Gulf in an MRI. So despite heroic efforts to collect samples, we can’t look to see if there has been an area that’s been damaged directly.”
While the oil’s effect on specific species remains unclear, scientists can say with some certainty that the Gulf oil disaster was not the all-out catastrophe it seemed it would be in the early days of the spill, said Roger Helm, a marine ecologist and chief of the environmental contaminants division at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Beyond that, he said, much is uncertain.
“This isn’t something where people should say, ‘Oh well, we dodged a bullet.’ I think that’s an incorrect conclusion,” he said. “It’s unlikely at this time that we will have a catastrophic effect. The probability is low. But there’s no question that a lot of oil was released, a lot of animals died and this system, at least over the short term, is not going to be the same.”
Helm is on a team of federal scientists working to conduct a formal Natural Resource Damage Assessment, which is a mandated accounting of what impact the disaster had on the Gulf environment. The assessment will be used to charge responsible companies, including BP, for the damages. If the government and responsible companies don’t agree on the scope the damages and the cost of repair, the process can end up in litigation.
Much of the information that will be used for that assessment will be available in three to five years, Helm said. Speculating about the situation before that would be irresponsible and beyond the bounds of what science allows, he said.
The fact that scientists are saying “we don’t know ” is not the same as saying everything is fine, said Samantha Joye, a University of Georgia oceanographer who has been studying the impact of the spill on the deep waters of the Gulf.
“With the dead dolphins and the dead sea turtles and the dead baby sharks — I think the impacts on the system are much more serious than anyone’s willing to admit or talk about,” she said, “and I find that really disturbing.
“The people who live there, they see this every day. They know what’s going on. And (elsewhere) it’s just dropped off everyone’s radar.”
In December, Joye traveled to the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico in a submarine. She found an oily substance coating the seafloor, she said. It appeared to have fallen on the bottom of the ocean from above.
“This stuff came down like a blizzard, and the fact that it came down so fast means that sessile (immobile) organisms had no escape. They basically were buried by it or suffocated by it,” she said.
She found dead worms, crabs, brittle stars, sea urchins, corals and sea fans, she said. All of that is bad in and of itself, she said, but it also raises big questions about what the damage on the ocean floor means for the rest of the Gulf ecosystem. Changes a mile beneath the surface can take decades or longer to work themselves out of the environment, she said.
There are several reasons scientists are hesitant to make big claims about the health of the Gulf after the oil disaster.
One is that history teaches us to expect the unexpected.
Three years after the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska, the population of herring collapsed. No one saw that coming, and that fish species, 22 years later, is still reported to be struggling.
It’s a “cliché of ecology” that everything’s connected, but it’s true, said Andrew Whitehead, an assistant professor of biology at Louisiana State University. The Gulf ecosystem is a maddening web of causes and effects, and it’s impossible to know what long-term impacts the spill will have, he said.
Whitehead has been studying gulf killifish to see if those fish that were exposed to petrochemicals will function differently long after those chemicals are gone. Specifically, he wants to know if the oil has made fish DNA function in a different and possibly harmful way.
“Initial mortalities that make the news aren’t necessarily the most predictive of the long-term effects (of oil) on populations,” he said. “It’s those sub-lethal effects on growth, on reproduction that are the most insidious for really impacting populations in the long term.”
Another reason for uncertainty is that the Gulf spill was unprecedented.
More than 200 million gallons of oil were released into the water, making it the largest accidental oil spill in history; furthermore, the spill occurred 5,000 feet below the surface of the ocean, making the situation hard to monitor and study.
Some deep-water scientists have taken to calling the ocean floor “inner space” because we know less about it than some parts of outer space and the moon.
The federal government also authorized the use of chemical dispersants to break up the oil at these extreme depths. The impact of that decision is unknown and will play out over years, said Elizabeth Kujawinski, an associate scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution who has been studying the impact of dispersants on the environment.
“I don’t think we have a good handle on ecological impact yet,” she said.
Migrating animals are also cause for confusion.
In some cases, it’s just impossible to check up on a particular kind of fish or bird because those creatures only come to the Gulf once a year or once every few years and then move away — possibly after being affected by the oil.
“The turtles that were impacted in this event won’t really come back to nest for somewhere between 20 and 30 years” even under normal conditions, said Helms, from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. “There were a lot of whale sharks that were in the area; we’re not really sure what happened with the whale sharks and their movement” after the spill.
Finally, these effects also are difficult to pin on oil.
Since January, 199 dead sea turtles and at least 86 dead baby dolphins have washed up on Gulf shores. It’s unclear to what degree these deaths were connected to the spill, according to NOAA reports, but the dolphin deaths in particular have been determined abnormal enough to be called an “unusual mortality event” by the government.
Scientists say they’re working furiously to figure things out.
“There’s some great science going on — it’s just not ready at the one-year anniversary,” said Reddy, from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. “Because the one-year anniversary is just an arbitrary day.”

The-CNN-Wire/Atlanta/+1-404-827-WIRE(9473)
™ & © 2011 Cable News Network, Inc., a Time Warner Company. All rights reserved.

 

Mr Salmond, there is no such thing as "sustainable" farmed salmon!

Dear All

I was distracted by a brief trip to the Continent from commenting on what may well become one of the biggest eco-disasters to strike these beautiful waters – quite apart from the fact that the Scottish government looks set to get into bed with a regime whose human rights record has left a lot to be desired for decades. Read for yourselves what someone much better qualified than I has written:

Andrew Flitcroft, in: The Observer, 20^th February 2011 – quoted in the Guardian:

You're so wrong about salmon, Mr Salmond

The new trade deal with China has terrifying implications for our wild fish stocks

Visiting trade delegations do not often register on my radar. However, the high-level Chinese visit to Scotland in January was different. Apart from the inevitable "gift" to the hosts, consigning two hapless giant pandas to a life of incarceration in Edinburgh Zoo, a new trade deal on Scottish farmed salmon between the two countries was signed, allowing access for the first time to the vast Chinese market.
First minister Alex Salmond crowed that the Scottish fish-farming industry may need to double salmon production to satisfy Chinese demand. The announcement a few days later that China was halting the import of Norwegian farmed salmon (China's retaliation, according to the Norwegian press, for the awarding of the Nobel peace prize to the imprisoned dissident Liu Xiaobo) lays Scottish government open to the charge that it is in effect supporting repression.
But cynical politics aside, the implications of increasing significantly, let alone doubling, farmed salmon production in Scotland are terrifying. Surely it is recklessly irresponsible to contemplate any increase without first rectifying the dire existing problems, particularly the spread of deadly sea lice, caused to juvenile wild salmon and sea trout in the west Highlands and Islands by current production levels. There is little doubt that the situation is set to deteriorate.
But first, for readers who are not familiar with the war between the salmon farming industry on the one hand and those trying to protect wild salmon and sea trout runs on the other, here is a brief summary of the problem. Marine cages of hundreds of thousands of farmed salmon are breeding grounds for millions of sea lice; these parasites feed on the mucus, tissue and blood of their farmed salmon hosts. The companies employ a range of measures using highly toxic chemicals to combat the lice, in order to reduce the damage and stress caused to their captive hosts.
However, juvenile wild fish, which migrate from the rivers to the sea each spring, are simply not designed to cope with more than the odd louse. As these fragile young fish, known as smolts, run the gauntlet past the fish-farm cages conveniently placed on their migration routes down the sea lochs towards the open sea, they are ambushed by the unnaturally high concentrations of lice. The attachment of more than 10 lice is almost invariably fatal. The fish are literally eaten alive although death is usually hastened by secondary infections, which gain access through open wounds made by the grazing lice.
This is the environmental calamity that the salmon farming industry and Scottish government is so determined to deny. Make no mistake – there is no such thing as "sustainable" farmed salmon, no matter what the evocative packaging on the supermarket shelves tries to convey. Indeed, all such packaging should be approached with scepticism. M&S's Lochmuir salmon comes from an entirely fictitious location.
Now evidence is growing that salmon farms in Scotland are fast losing the battle against sea lice, mirroring the situation in Norway, where the head of the Directorate for Nature Management (the equivalent of Scottish Natural Heritage) has just called for a 50% cut in salmon production because, for the second year running, the average number of lice on each caged fish in several regions of Norway has exceeded the official limit of one mature female louse or five lice in total with increasing resistance to chemical treatment. He said that such a cut might not be enough to save Norway's fragile wild salmon stocks as: "The problem is very big and it is not under control."
It is perhaps no wonder the salmon farming industry in Scotland is so sensitive on the sea lice issue. Witness their gagging of Scottish government last year to prevent publication of Marine Scotland's farm inspection reports. Analysis of these reports, obtained by Salmon and Trout Association's Guy Linley-Adams under FOI, confirms instances where sea lice have been completely out of control, necessitating early slaughter on several farms.
Compared to five years ago, Scotland's salmon farms are using far greater quantities of pesticides to kill sea lice on farmed fish as the chemicals become less and less effective and the lice develop immunity. Some are adopting desperate measures and two managers of a Shetland farm have just been charged with animal cruelty following the death of more than 6,000 farmed salmon last August.
Given these problems, it is galling that Scottish government continues to trot out the same tired mantra that salmon farming is "sustainable" and there is no proven damage to wild fish populations, aided and abetted by the nauseating spin peddled by the Scottish Salmon Producers' Organisation, the front for the Norwegian companies that dominate the industry in Scotland. Most galling of all is the prospect of an even bigger industry.
There is one ray of hope. Solicitor Guy Linley-Adams, acting for the owners of the Ullapool river, has just submitted a formal 80-page complaint to the EU, detailing the failure of the authorities to designate an appropriate number of west coast Scottish rivers as Special Areas for Conservation for salmon under the EU Habitats Directive.
The complaint also details the failure of the Scottish government to rein in the salmon-farming industry to provide proper protection for wild Atlantic salmon and sea trout in the west Highlands and Islands. The gloves are starting to come off.

Andrew Flitcroft is the editor of Trout & Salmon

RENEW TV tip of the week: Explaining climate change

This message has just come in from the lovely RENEW people up in Lochaber:

"There was a great programme on BBC4 a couple of evenings ago about climate change sceptics – really well done, balanced, well argued etc.
[Please see below for] a link for the programme on BBC iplayer (an hour long). Also for those who haven’t the time to watch the whole thing a link to a video that was shown during the programme explaining climate change and actions taken in terms of probability – really clever and good to watch.

The whole programme on iplayer: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/search?q=Storyville

The short video on youtube:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zORv8wwiadQ

Happy viewing

Justine

Robert & Justine Dunn

RENEW Household Project Officers

Lochaber Environmental Group

An Drochaid

Claggan

Fort William

PH33 6PH

Tel:  01967 402453 (9am - 9pm, 7days)

The collapse of fishing on Scotland's West Coast: Where was the leadership?

The following is from C.O.A.S.T. Newsletter for February 2011. It is being published here with kind permission from C.O.A.S.T. – Community of Arran Seabed Trust

Where was the leadership?

The UK media’s focus on the urgent need for marine conservation measures has probably never been more intense. Channel 4’s Fish Fight season has set in motion a mushrooming of morbid interest in the drastically unsustainable exploitation of our seas. But it was a smaller news item on BBC Reporting Scotland ('Life after fishing in Mallaig') that has really exposed the sad folly of Scotland’s marine mismanagement.

Mallaig, on the remote Northwest shores of Lochaber, was founded in the 1840s when families were pressured by the local laird to leave their crofts and move to the coast to make a living from fishing. From these difficult, subsistence roots the village became a thriving port, a gateway to the islands and eventually synonymous with a bonanza off herring and prawn fishing. In the 1960s, it was not exaggeration to call Mallaig the busiest herring port in Europe.

But 50 years later, the fishing which breathed life into that crofters' re-settlement has collapsed. BBC Scotland interviewed local skippers from Mallaig, who described with rare West coast emotion, the sadness at seeing their ships taken for decommissioning. Although there was some counter-balancing positivity about diversification, this was the harsh reality of a fishing policy gone wrong.

What seemed so incongruous was the absence of any comment by fishing leaders in the area, usually so quick to expound the views of the industry. It would seem to indicate that the decline of Mallaig's fishing economy is nothing but a shameful chapter for which no-one wants to be accountable. For years the mobile fishing leaders have had a cosy arrangement with government and this has served very well an explosively successful, but highly short-term fishery. The long-term, however, looks bleak. Fishermen have been let down.

It is a bright red herring to say we were dispossessed by Europe. Scotland manages her inshore fisheries up to six miles from land. If even just ten years ago, area control and effort control had been applied at the same time, we might not be in this sad mess, forced to diversify once again - like the crofting forefathers of Mallaig - from what should be a sustainable resource. As fishing communities adapt, perhaps fishermen will look to build new alliances and find fresh leadership to conserve and regenerate the resource that underpins the industry.

Many fishermen are skeptical of area control and are shy of change. But as this organisation’s chairman Howard Wood told a gathering of marine policy-makers at a recent conference in London, "I am the biggest supporter of the Scottish fishing industry." It was an intentionally bold statement and what he meant was this: our leaders in recent decades have sought short-term gain, but C.O.A.S.T.'s vision is for a viable Scottish fishing industry for the future.

*****

Some thoughts on the EU's Common Fisheries Policy (CFP)

Blaming foreigners for the vanishing fish
by Bagehot, columnist for The Economist, 13 Jan 2011

[with thanks to Dave Gibson, The Professional Boatmans Association, via David Ainsley, for the link] 

THERE is a lot of talk in the air, just now, about the madness of the European Union's Common Fisheries Policy (CFP), and how its strict quota system forces British trawlermen to throw vast quantities of fish back into the sea, dead. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, a television chef and food writer, mounted a passionate attack on the CFP this week on Channel 4 (you can watch it here, as long as you can tolerate the maddening, compulsory advertisements about meerkats). As happens on such programmes, Mr F-W went out on a trawler with some gruff but friendly fishermen, who told him how it broke their hearts to throw perfectly edible cod back into the sea.

The programme noted, correctly, that this is appallingly wasteful, and that the CFP is working very badly. It explained how the problem was that the giant, well-equipped boat in question had used up its cod quota for the year and was now fishing for other less desirable species like ling and monkfish in a desperate attempt to earn enough money to keep operating. But alas, when the nets were pulled back in they were full of lots of cod, and only a very few monkfish. Mr F-W looked miserable as he watched 90% of the catch being ditched over the side.

For a huge majority of those watching, I suspect the conclusion was that wicked, stupid EU bureaucrats were to blame. I imagine the following exchange in the House of Commons this week, between a Labour MP, Kelvin Hopkins and a Conservative MP, John Redwood, would have cheered them greatly:

Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab): Wisely, Britain already has a number of opt-outs from the European Union. I am thinking specifically of the single currency; it was to the great credit of our former leader that he kept us out of the euro. Would not a test arise, however, if Britain decided to opt out of something that we currently opt into? For example, if we chose to withdraw from the common fisheries policy and to place our own historic fishing grounds under democratic British control, would not that represent a test of our sovereignty?

John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con): Indeed; the hon. Gentleman makes a powerful point. I, too, would like us to opt out of the common fisheries policy. I would like us to elect a Government in this country who had the necessary majority to go off to Brussels and say, “It is now the settled will of this Parliament that we want different arrangements for fishing, and if you will not grant them through the European Union arrangements, we would like to negotiate our exit from the common fisheries policy.” That is exactly the kind of renegotiation that many of my hon. Friends were elected to achieve, and, had we had a majority, we would have wanted our Government to do something like that. There are a number of other policy areas, some of which are more politically contentious across the Floor of the House, where we think we can make better decisions here than are being made in our name by the European Union.

Having worked in Brussels for several years, reporting on the CFP and above all on the horrible annual ministerial meetings at which fish quotas are doled out to each of the 27 member countries, I can sympathise too. Even hardened diplomats described the annual December fish council as a sickening farce, in which scientists proposes fishing bans or tiny quotas to preserve fish species from extinction, the European Commission increases the quotas, national ministers increase them again, and national fishing fleets are sent out again to rape the seas.

But here is the thing. It is emotionally satisfying to side with "our" British trawlermen, who risk their lives doing a dangerous yet somehow romantic job in wild seas, and dream of British fish being protected by British coastguard cutters ready to ram and biff foreign invaders.

But alas, the true tragedy of EU fisheries policy is a lot more complicated. This is a blog posting rather than a polished article, so forgive me for offering a few thoughts for readers to chew on:

Trawlermen are very good at telling reporters how it breaks their heart to throw fish over the side because of EU rules. Some are less quick to mention that throwing fish over the side for commercial profit is rife in their industry. It is called "high-grading" and happens when a trawler fills its holds with low or medium value fish near the beginning of a trip, then fills its nets with a more valuable species. Skippers routinely chuck the first catch over the side to make room for the more profitable fish.

The trawlermen also say they are forced to continue fishing in waters full of cod, after their cod quotas are exhausted, just to make ends meet. It is wrong and awful, one skipper tells Mr F-W: he is forced to look for Dover Sole, but catches tonnes of cod instead, which he has to discard. I hate to be harsh, but just maybe what you are hearing there is somebody describing a business that is only marginally viable, and which is only viable if he does stupid and wasteful things like go out fishing in the knowledge he can only land a fraction of his catch.

Trawling is only marginally viable in some northern European waters for all sorts of reasons. One big reason is historic over-fishing by fishing fleets. Another big reason is that there are still too many boats seeking to fish for too many days a year. Yes, the EU has paid national governments to decommission boats, but the boats that are left grow more and more powerful and efficient at finding fish every year. Even with a fleet of constant size, the so-called "technological creep" increases the average fleet's killing capacity by about 4% a year.

Lots of today's trawlers in places like the North Sea are big and fuel-thirsty. They were built at a time of lower fuel prices, when it made economic sense to trade engine power for labour. Now, though trawler fuel is tax-free in the EU (a walloping subsidy, by the way), high oil prices make some trawlers uneconomical every time they leave port.

The EU, meaning Brussels bureaucrats, knows the CFP is crazy. Top European Commission officials say the current quota system is indefensible. The problem is that certain key national governments, eg, France, Italy, Greece, Malta, Poland (it is a long list), are adamantly opposed to any reforms that would lead to wholesale restructuring and consolidation of fishing fleets.

Given the horribly fragile state of fish stocks, the best reforms would involve a market-based system, in which the overall catch were divided up into shares which could be traded among fishermen. This would give them an incentive to avoid overfishing (something like this has worked well in New Zealand). Just saying that the policy of throwing back dead fish must stop is not enough to save the fish. An end to discards is only safe if the overall "fishing effort" continues to be reduced. That must involve consolidation. But the French, notably, lead a camp wedded to the idea that each individual fishing fleet in each individual port must be preserved, and hang the preservation of fish.

Did you know (I do, because I have seen it with my own eyes) that French fishermen so dislike market forces that they set a minimum price that they will accept, nationwide, for each species, each time they land their catches? If dealers at fish markets fail to meet that minimum price, the boxes of fish are taken to the harbour wall and tipped into the water. French fishermen (always ready to say how their hearts are broken by EU rules) would rather destroy good fish than allow the market to set prices (or even allow those fish to be sent for free to hospitals, charities or the like).

British Eurosceptics love to point to Iceland as an example of a country that has managed cod stocks well. Iceland is not in the EU, they say, therefore leaving the EU would allow us to run cod fisheries much better, QED. Well, I have reported from Iceland and interviewed fishermen, fish wholesalers, politicians and officials about their system. Their model does work a lot better than the CFP. But, and this is relevant, Iceland's fishing grounds are also rather easy to manage. They are often "clean", meaning that if you dip your nets in one bit of sea, you catch one species. As a rule of thumb, this happens in colder water. Once you get down into the North Sea and the English Channel, let alone further south, trawlers must contend with mixed fisheries, where a single net may contain a dozen species.

Finally, what of the bold talk in Parliament about grabbing back control of British historical fishing grounds? It is heart-warming, but it is bunkum. Yes, the British government did a poor deal over fish to get into the EEC under Edward Heath. Yes, it is horrible seeing British ministers locked in airless meeting rooms in Brussels, locked into a system that destroys fishing stocks. It would be lovely to stamp our feet and say no British minister will ever take part in such a travesty again.

But many of the most valuable fish stocks, such as North Sea herring, swim between British, Dutch, Belgian and French waters. If we stalked out of the EU, good luck persuading some of our ex-partners to exercise restraint when part-time British herring are over their side of the line. Equally, there are trawlers from Belgium, for instance, with historic fishing rights in British waters dating back hundreds of years. So if we pulled out of the CFP, British fish ministers would still have to meet fish ministers from the French, Belgian, Dutch, Danish or Polish fleets each year to haggle over mutal access rights and allowable catches. Why, those ministers might even find it easier to meet for joint meetings once a year. They might even find themselves meeting in a city with easy transport links for the countries involved, such as Brussels.

So what is the answer? Fight for reform within the CFP. There are some big important countries that know the CFP is broken, and that the whole system needs to change. The Dutch are allies, the Nordics and—at least when it comes to traded quotas and market-based systems—the Spanish.

And please, television presenters of Britain, do not give a free pass to fishermen. They may be grizzled and brave, but in almost every country with a coastline, too many have proved themselves to be environmental vandals with no sense of their long-term interests, let alone those of the poor fish.

Update, Friday 14th. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's latest episode includes a visit to Brussels to lobby the EU. In the interests of fairness, I should report that he openly concedes that the causes of CFP failure are complex. He also has a practical suggestion: that the British fish-eating public ease the pressure on cod, salmon and tuna by eating a wider range of species, such as unfashionable but tasty mackerel and dab. His campaign website, Hugh's Fish Fight, links to all sorts of organisations with ideas on CFP reform. He also comes across as a thoughtful and decent man, rightly outraged by the horror of discards. Having seen Brussels at work, however, I worry that his campaign is too British-centric. The real problem here is countries like France, and their cowardly pandering politicians who live in terror of the fishing lobby because theirs is a picturesque, romantic and dangerous job.

Under a previous pseudonym I once argued that politicians live by what I call the Richard Scarry rule, namely, no elected politician likes to tangle with any sector of the economy that routinely appears in children's books (eg, firemen, farmers, fishermen, nurses, teachers, drivers of planes, trains and things that move). The British government has wanted CFP reform for years, but British ministers calling for reform are ten-a-penny in the EU, and their arguments are undermined by the ferocity of the Eurosceptic camp back home. If Mr F-W really wants to change things, he needs to launch his campaign in France. Good luck with that.

Sustainable Seafood on Channel 4

Channel 4's top chefs join forces in the Big Fish Fight championing sustainable seafood and celebrating lesser known delicacies of the deep.

Hugh's Big Fish Fight
9pm on Tuesday 11, Wednesday 12 and Thursday 13 January, 2011:
Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall embarks on a new campaign to save our fishies in this three-part special for Channel 4's Fish Season. Hugh is campaigning for the reform of the EU Common Fisheries Policy (CFP). Up to half of all fish caught in the North Sea is thrown back overboard dead due to the current quota system imposed by the CFP.
Sign up to this on www.fishfight.net to help bring an end to this senseless waste of food.

Jamie's Fish Suppers
Wednesday 12 - Sunday 16 January, 2011:
Jamie Oliver rustles up some fishy fare in this special series of ten bite-sized programmes, all in a bid to save our seas as part of Channel 4's Big Fish Fight season

Heston's Fishy Feast9pm on Friday 14 January, 2011:
In this fishy episode of Heston's celebrated Feasts, the gastronomic wizard conjures up the most magical of marine cuisine banquets.

Gordon Ramsay: Shark Bait
Sunday 16 January 2011, on Channel 4, 9pm
Gordon Ramsay goes on a very personal mission as he attempts to save the most beautiful and majestic of ocean creatures, the shark.

Arthur's Hell on High Water
Arthur Potts Dawson is taking to the seas to examine the reality of commercial trawler fishing

See also:
www.channel14.com/4food/the-big-fish-fight
and
www.facebook.com/bigfishfight