The science around pulse fishing could have been better – should have been better – and it can be argued that by rights it should have been copper-bottomed before licences were issued in large numbers. The right boxes have been ticked in terms of efficiency and discards that hit the deck, but questions were left hanging, not least the issue of where the sole in the Eastern Channel disappeared to.
The French and English fishermen have argued that pulse fishing is to blame for the loss of their livelihoods, and it wouldn’t be a surprise if pulse fishing was part of the problem, along with rising sea temperatures, habitat loss, growing pollution and rapidly shifting marine populations, all of which is happening in one of the busiest and most densely packed waterways in the world.
It’s remarkable that with all these problems facing the marine environment as a whole, NGOs appear to be intent on portraying the already very diminished fishing industry sector as the sole culprit, apparently ambivalent about all those wind farms, sub-sea cables and proposals for an artificial island on grounds that supposedly need to be protected from a few beamers and seine netters.
It’ll be interesting to see if the sole do return to the Eastern Channel once pulse fishing has come to an end. If they don’t… Who knows? Wait and see.
But pulse fishing itself is almost an irrelevance here as the overriding questions are whether or not decisions should be reached on the basis of (as the saying goes) the best available science, or should these be taken on the basis of emotion, social media campaigning and professional lobbying?
There’s also a deeper issue here as an NGO that is no friend to fishermen has adroitly split the fishing industry right down the middle, skilfully tapping into all the faultlines and cracking them wide open. Every division and perceived division has been exploited as those for and against pulse fishing have been positioned on a divide that is north vs south, small vs large and tradition vs technology.
This particular NGO has won its battle and it’ll be looking for another ones – and it’s anybody’s guess who they’ll be coming for next.
They say, he who dines with the devil should have a long spoon.