Who needs the nuts in the sp/swp the fishermen are protesting for themselves

by iosaf - nunca mas = never again Sat Dec 14, 2002 22:21

have decided not to adjust the plan of assisted "natural" recuperation of fish stocks in european waters.
The total number of job losses estimated by Brussels is 7000 per year.
Galicia home to the "nunca mais" campaign of course expects much larger job losses.
Short-term dismal economic prospects and hopes mean that fishing communities and coastal reions of Europe which are amongst the poorest of all present regions in the EU find it hard to stomach fishing policies.
If these policies were thought out, supported and implemented in a way which put the welfare of those regions and their peoples (mostly speakers of minority languages and migrant diasporiac global cultures) then maybe we would have more Gaeilge, less smack and fishies on the dishies of the far far future.
But that type of thinking is beyond gaeilge, SHELL ESSO España and the EU alone,
that type of thinking requires lots of heart and mind.
and co-operation.
with i would presume the socialists of Europe as well.

by grow up Sun Dec 15, 2002 21:44

Why are you attacking parties just for the sake of it. Yes fishermen are protesting, and quite legitimatly. I dont think that parties think that workers cant protest without them!

To be honest the fishermens protests are being lead by petty-bourgeois small shopkeepers, I'd prefer workers and workers' parties leading the protests.

I think that you lead a very sheltered and inactive life. You really actually think that parties are a bad thing. Why dont you get off your arse, get active in the workers' movement and stop imposing your anarchist ideology on everyone else.

by Won't say Mon Dec 16, 2002 00:26

Would you ever get on with life - there's enough problems with the system and the world without clinging to a failed ideology. Marxism is as bad as corporate capitalism - big western materialist theory of how everybody should live. Well don't try to fit me into your theory.

Small shopkeepers are a decent, necessary hard-working part of any society and we need more of them (and less tesco's and other chains).

Whats a 'petit bourgeise'? Is it a yougurt? Why don't you speak English?

by Terry Mon Dec 16, 2002 12:08

When we joined the EU, then the EEC, way back in the early 70's, the deal was essentially
struck then. Our fisheries were handed over to Europe and in return we got subsidies for
the bigger constituency of farming. I would imagine that the politicians figured it was
easier to cash in the fish there and then, rather than try and build up our own industry
and manage it sustainability. Although I do recall in the 70's the Irish Navy made some
feeble gunboat efforts to clear off foreign trawlers just like the Icelandic werer
doing around the same time. But the EEC told us off and we stopped.

The deal made was not a fair one, because since we joined, other EU states in that time
have extracted over 100 billion euros worth of fish, while in return Ireland has received
maybe only somewhere between 30 to 40 billion euros in return.

For a long time, we were led to believe that we joined the EEC/EU and they just gave us all
this money for nothing. It should be clear now that you don't get anything for nothing and we
didn't.

In the intervening 30+ years, the seas around Ireland having been basically plundered. When the
first signs of damage became clear years ago, quotas were introduced. From the start the whole
process was co-opted, because of political horse trading. Politicians consistently ignored
scientific advice and fudged the the figures, which meant catches were always set too high to
avoid the inevitable decline in stocks. And where quotas were in place, when such fish were
accidently caught, they were dumped (dead) overboard. In the fantasy land of politics, these
dead fish never counted, but in the world of biology, they still do and so stocks and the
sustainability of our fisheries continued declining.

Compounding these problems, in the last decade or so, more and more species once considered
undesirable (for food) are regularly been caught and ground up for animal and ironically fish-farm
feed. This mining of all strata in the ocean ecosystems is having devasting effects. Also recent
intensive fishing of deep sea fish, which live much longer, but also reproduce much slower,
because biological productivity at depth is much slower due to both the cold and lack of light,
is simply ludricous. Tonnage in these sectors has soared and will drop just as quick.

And so we see, the current crisis has a long history and given the fact, that a similar crisis
is gripping every other major fishery in the world, we can see that the heart of the problem
is sustainability or lack of it, and the politics of the way the spoils are being divided up.

As someone put it years ago about Norwegian fishing. For years the thousands of villages along
their very long coast managed well with the small boats and relatively environmentally friendly
methods, (.i.e no mono-filament nets spread for miles that catch every living thing in the water),
but now with big boats and 'modern' equipment, it was reckoned only 5 or 6 such big trawlers were
needed to catch the same amount of fish.

So we see it is a social policy, either spread it thinly over tens thousands of people or just
hand the whole load over to half a dozen big boat owners- Capitalist to put it correctly.

I get the impression that there are voices in the background of this current crisis in Ireland trying
to put the science against the fishermen. The fishermen in this country have been done a great
injustice and robbed by their elected 'representatives' in the Dail (via sell outs)and also by some
of their own colleagues aspiring to ever lasting growth of their own personnal wealth. There are
even some who are pooh-poohing the idea of a shortage of fish and that there are still plenty of
fish. That is simply a ridiculous naive notion. This is the kind of thinking that said the Dodo
could never go extinct. It is a quasi religious belief. The evidence of the collapse of the
Grand Banks fishery off Canada in the early 90s should see that idea off.

The solution: Well so far I think the fishermen are doing the right thing in attempting to
re-secure the 12 (or 6?) mile limit. In the longer term, the problem to cure is the way capitalist
methods of organising society result in the devastation of those ecosystems on which people
depend. In the meantime the way Iceland manages it's own waters, might be a good place to
start, but it is unlikely the neo-liberal political system would allow that.

by jmayler Mon Dec 16, 2002 12:10

EU Robbery? I agree that all of Europes fishermen are responsible for decimating the fish stocks- But the people who are being robbed by Irish and European fishermen alike are our children- or ouselves if you plan on being around for another 20 years or so, by then Cod could be extinct.
Try and think beyond the next quarters accounts!

by Graham Caswell Mon Dec 16, 2002 14:04

The fisheries crisis is one of the first and clearest examples of humanity, vastly empowered with technology, running into planetary limits. The solution to the fisheries crisis is one that nobody is talking about - not the fisherment, not the EU, not the government, not the media. A child could figure it out (especially since they have less invested in an unsustainable lifestyle and society).

People must (and will) eat less fish because there are fewer and fewer left. Yet you'll still see 'Donegal Catch' advertising every night on RTE (the Cod probably come from Iceland, but that's marketing for you).

It is a fact that we as a society will eat less fish (not only are 'farmed' fish an ethical and environmental nightmare, they require 3 Kg of wild fish to feed/produce 1Kg of farmed fish). The question then becomes 'how shall the declining catch be rationed?'. Keeping within the existing distribution system will mean that fish will be a food for the wealthy only. On the other hand, taxing the movement of fish away from the landing areas will mean that fish is something that is cheapest and most available in the fishing towns where they are landed - the way it was in the past.

Watch the fisheries crisis - it's an indication of what will be happenning in a lot of other areas as more and more environmental limits are reached over the next few years and decades.

by Marxist Mon Dec 16, 2002 15:17

You believe that Marxism is dead, how wrong you are! Most people active on the Irish left are marxists!

Do you not believe that different classes exist? do you honestly think that the USSR was really what Marx and other writers had in mind when writing about socialism and communism?

I think that people like you should really get an education. You should learn what marxism is about and what marxists say before you go on the internet and just have a go at marxism.

I do accept that small shopkeepers do work hard. But they are not workers and they are tried in with nationalism and conservative ideas. I wouldn't necessarily support small shopkeepers over large companies like Tesco, why? give me a reason! If anything Tesco is more efficent and they have a massive workforce that are more easily organised into trade unions.

by Phuq Hedd Mon Dec 16, 2002 17:13

Graham, although an individual decision to eat less fish would ease _a_ source of pressure on this resource I doubt that it's a real solution. The fishing industry is likely to turn to export markets if the small Irish market declines. Does anyone have data on how much of our own catch we eat and how much is exported? I wouldn't be surprised if we export prime fish and import frozen crap.

It's interesting how governments appear to be completely unable to manage fishing. First the swordfish stocks of the North Eastern seaboard in the U.S. collapsed in the 70's. Then the cod fisheries off Newfoundland/Nova Scotia in the 80's. The last case was very interesting. The government introduced a "license quota" system which one was allowed to trade. It ended up with the large firms (often foreign owned) being able to capitalise equipment for boats and factories and eventually purchasing licenses from smaller fishers who were able to get a larger temporary gain from the sale/rent of their quota. These companies were not using the smaller fishers method of longlining, but instead used draggers and purse-seines that ripped up the seabed floor. It looks as though Eastern Canadas fishing industry will never recover.

Whaling is another fine example.

I suspect that the "eat less fish" plan will have no effect unless you can convince entire world markets to adopt it, and there are a lot of protein hungry countries out there.

by King Mob Mon Dec 16, 2002 21:35

Graham Caswell is the only one to have hit the nail on the head here. He is dead right - Eat less fish and the problem's solved. Simple really. Nuff said.

by iosaf (oracle duty jedi) Tue Dec 17, 2002 13:08 barcelona.

on anarchists doing something seaside.
where the fishies come home like.
70,000tonnes of crude was lost at sea.
5000 volunteers are on the beaches.
4500 soldiers are on the beaches
7000 more paid staff by governments will be on the beaches
7 boats are on the slick from 6 countries.
A seaside bucket of crude weighs 35 kg.
17,000 tonnes has so far been collected.

53,000 tonnes to go of crude which will mix with marine matter (fish, algae, plankton, flora) and sand.

Sand as we well know gets everywhere.

Anarchists support local industries because anarchists support local life. When anarcho-syndicalist assemblies grow larger than a certain critical mass then orthodoxy which we consider to be dangerous creeps in sometimes but not exclusively of a marxist leninist variety. We think at this stage when just to keep things in persepctive less than 400 marxist-leninist volunteers are on the beaches, that local people who live near beaches and live on fishing should protest about the sea.
If "worker revolutionaries want to help them then that would be great", wouldn´t it?

by Nicholas Tue Dec 17, 2002 14:06 Cork

Meanwhile while ordinary Irish fishermen are getting screwed, a certain Mr. Kevin McHugh owns the largest trawler in the world, registered in Kilybegs, Co. Donegal, feted by Taoiseach at its launch (http://archives.tcm.ie/irishexaminer/2000/09/01/current/ipage_4.htm).

Guess where it's fishing - off the coast of Africa! It has the capacity to catch enough food to feed 18 million people. Of course not African people! They're just going to have to live on depleted resources and leave their traditional ways of life for work in a nearby slave plantation or somthing.

by Terry Tue Dec 17, 2002 16:08

I have trawled up some URLs here covering the current fishing crisis (local and global)
and some articles on Marine Reserves and their benefits.

The way to go is establish multiple large marine reserves around all coasts. Experience with
existing marine reserves show they offer substantial benefits and act as a source of
new fish which diffuses out of the protected areas into surrounding waters.

For migratory fish, a series of reserves throughout the range would be required. The reserves
are not only useful as a source of fish, but have valuable conservation benefits in their
own right. For coastal regions, they greatly increase the attractions for recreational
activities such as diving. It is time we did this here and would serve as a good way of
getting around restrictive EU rules and destructive 'free trade' practices that simply hand
over our resources to other nations.

The decline in fish has been going on since industrial fishing began just over one hundred
years ago. Back about 200 or 300 years, Cod used to regularly grow to 12 feet! Compare that
to what you now get in your Chipper.

Finally it is worth bearing in mind what we lose is not just an exploitative resource, but the
quality of our lives suffer too, whenever we wreck ecosystems of any kind.

Guardian coverage of current fishing crisis
http://www.guardian.co.uk/fish/0,7368,349369,00.html

Guardian Global fishing crisis archive
http://www.guardian.co.uk/fish/archive/0,7364,349370,00.html

Finite Oceans
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4050672,00.html

The Global Fisheries Crisis
http://archive.greenpeace.org/~comms/cbio/global.html

Global fishing fleet 5 times overcapacity
http://www.sdearthtimes.com/et1098/et1098s2.html

High Tech Methods Decimating Fish Populations
http://ens-news.com/ens/feb2002/2002-02-18-06.asp

Hidden forces mask crisis in world fisheries
http://www.sdearthtimes.com/et0898/et0898s6.html

Study Says Bad Data by China Inflated Global Fishing Yields
http://saup.fisheries.ubc.ca/Media/New_York_Times_30_Nov_2001.pdf

Marine Reserves Found to Boost Nearby Fishing Grounds
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2001/12/1204_TVmarinereserves.html

Marine Protected Areas
http://www.westpacfisheries.net/wpapers/mpa.html

Leading Marine Scientists Release New Evidence Marine Reserves Produce Enormous Benefits within
Their Boundaries and Beyond
http://www.reefrelief.org/benefit_evidence.html

by iosaf Tue Dec 17, 2002 16:37

Africa- flags of convenience Ireland Spain Morocco and Killybegs.

co-operation between an African state and the Spanish government.
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/19073/story.htm

and some background over the last year and a bit.

http://www.arabicnews.com/ansub/Daily/Day/010331/2001033122.html
http://www.arabicnews.com/ansub/Daily/Day/010329/2001032923.html
http://www.arabicnews.com/ansub/Daily/Day/010728/2001072823.html

and old news smelly fish on the Atlantic Dawn and why it might conveniently be fishing off the coast of Africa;
http://www.irishskipper.net/cgi-bin/news/archives.cgi?category=9&view=9-01

and some anarcho-thoughts on flags of convenience,
http://www.infoshop.org/inews/stories.php?story=02/11/19/6525145

thank you for the links Terry!
enough info for an info campaign, why don´t people know who own / run / staff / finance these "ecological timebombs" that sail our global waters, after all we all know the results.