MPs debate fishing
19,000 sea angling jobs are firmly hooked
Britain’s professional fishermen regard jobs in the resurgent sea angling industry as ‘ghost jobs’ and not as valid, or as real, as their own.
Members of Parliament who debate sea fisheries on Wednesday (December 7) have been told that the £1 billion sea angling industry provides 19,000 jobs in England and Wales.
In a briefing for MPs with a coastal constituency, the National Federation of Sea Anglers says the commercial industry “finds it difficult to grasp that there are genuine fishing livelihoods, other than those of commercial fishermen.”
The MPs are reminded that angling contributes to every seaside economy and that their support is wanted to force the government to ensure that anglers as well as commercial fishermen, can influence the future sensible and
constructive governance of UK fisheries.
More than a million men, women, boys and girls, including the disabled, go sea angling. The 19,000 jobs they support is about the same as the number engaged in the commercial catching and processing of UK fish.
The government recognises the two sectors are economically about equally important, the anglers claim.
They say that poor management of publicly owned fish stocks to provide short-term benefits for commercial fishing leading has led, in the longer term, to serious depletion of many species of fin fish. Despite this sea angling has survived and developed.
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[Comment – Have you responded to the consultation by Defra on the proposals to increase the minimum landing size (mls) of bass and appropriate nesh mesh size? If not, please visit the web page, how you can help. Welsh resident sea anglers should respond to the consultation by the Welsh Assembly Government on similar proposals.]
[photo – another bass ready for release]