Category Archives: Fishing industry

‘Men don’t trust we’re strong enough’: Somali women push into fish industry

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Selling fish has enabled some to quadruple their usual earnings but sexist attitudes are harder to overcome

Every morning before sunrise, when most residents in the southern coastal city of Kismayo are asleep, Fardowsa Mohamed Ahmed, 32, goes to the beach to purchase fresh fish, which she will sell in the market.

Like most women in this business, she depends on men to catch the fish. Men dominate the fishing sector. It is considered “men’s work” in Somali society. But Ahmed is determined to push her way in.

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Fears Brexit talks could collapse in June but UK still optimistic

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‘Limited progress’ in bridging gaps on fisheries, health, environment and workers’ rights

The UK is still optimistic about striking a trade deal with the EU but warned that talks could collapse in June unless Brussels abandons its demands for a common fisheries policy and a level playing field, a source close to the UK’s negotiating team said.

The source said only “limited progress in bridging the gaps between us” had been made at last week’s talks, but there was “confidence that progress can be made quite quickly”.

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Britain running down the clock in Brexit talks, says Michel Barnier

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EU negotiator expresses frustrations at UK refusal to discuss key issues of transition

Michel Barnier has suggested the UK is running down the clock in talks over the future trade and security relationship with the EU.

The claim by the bloc’s chief negotiator during a virtual press conference at the end of a difficult week of videoconference talks was swiftly denied by the government.

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Brexit ‘opportunity to ban supertrawlers from UK waters’

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Environmental groups fear link between huge ships and spikes in dolphin deaths

Brexit offers the perfect opportunity to ban industrial supertrawler fishing boats from UK waters, according to campaigners.

The factory-sized ships can be hundreds of feet long and have been criticised for indiscriminate fishing as they catch hundreds of thousands of fish in relatively short periods. Environmentalists fear their presence correlates with spikes in numbers of dolphins washing up dead.

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What’s the catch? British fishermen’s hopes and fears for Brexit deal

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Fishing was a powerful factor in the case for leaving the EU. On the eve of crucial trade talks, the Observer finds optimism tempered by caution on the quays of Devon and Cornwall

Neil Watson was eight or nine when his dad took him out to sea for the first time. Soon he was earning his first pocket money by washing fish boxes on the quay at Brixham in south Devon. Three years after he started crewing, he got his skipper’s ticket and eventually he bought his own boat. For 30 years, he regularly spent seven days at sea followed by one night off, only stopping when his boat sank two years ago.

“I fished through good times and bad times. Fishing’s like riding a wave – one minute you’re up the top, and the next you’re down in the trough,” he said. Now Watson works at Brixham’s fish market, one of the largest in England, where £40m of fish was sold last year across the UK and Europe. A fisherman’s life is brutal, he said, but he badly misses the camaraderie.

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Brexit: No 10 insists fishing waters will be under UK control after Varadkar remarks – live news

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Rolling coverage of the day’s political developments as they happen

Here is the Times’s Steven Swinford on the significant of the PMOS’s comments on fishing.

No 10 spokesman suggests access to Britain’s waters for EU fishing boats *will* be the subject of negotiations over future trade deal

‘We are taking back control of our waters

‘It will be for the UK to determine for the best interests of the UK who fishes in those waters’

The PMOS is not talking about some of the post-Brexit Whitehall arrangements.

He says there will be 40 officials working in government taskforce on the EU future partnership.

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EU trade chief foresees ‘financial services for fishing’ Brexit bargain

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Commissioner says Europe will seek fishery access and UK will want concessions for City

The EU’s trade commissioner has suggested there could be a last-minute trade-off with Brussels offering the City of London access to European markets in return for European fleets retaining their fishing rights in British waters.

The UK’s financial services sector will lose its automatic right to serve Europe-based clients at the end of the transition period and the EU will need to negotiate access to UK waters for its fishing boats.

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Trump’s trade war with China creates unexpected winner: Canada’s lobster industry

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Prices are at record levels and demand is growing for fishermen north of the border after China imposed tariffs on live lobsters

Long hours, rolling ocean swells, and the occasional spring snowstorm are all part of the job for Francis Morrissey.

“It’s bred into you from the time you’re a child: you either like the ocean or you don’t,” said the fisherman and business owner from the Canadian province of Prince Edward Island. “Even when I’m in the office, I wish I was out there.”

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Salmon farming in the Beagle Channel enters troubled waters | Hannah Summers

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Victory for community concerned about the industry’s environmental costs strengthens calls for shakeup of rules along Chilean coast

A growing wave of resistance to the expansion of salmon farms along the Chilean coast has led to an important victory in the fight to protect a pristine fjord in southern Patagonia, home to indigenous groups and an array of stunning wildlife.

Dolphins, whales and colonies of penguins thrive in the 240km-long Beagle Channel, an area of outstanding natural beauty between Chile and Argentina which attracts tourists from all over the world.

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Major tuna brands failing to tackle slavery in Pacific supply chains – report

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Research shows only four of biggest companies in £17bn industry said they conducted due diligence specifically to uncover abuses

The world’s biggest canned tuna brands are failing to tackle modern slavery in their Pacific supply chains, leaving thousands of workers at sea under threat of human rights abuses, a report has found.

According to findings published on Monday by the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre (BHRRC), an international corporate watchdog, only four of the world’s 35 largest tuna retail brands said they conducted due diligence with the specific aim of uncovering modern slavery in their supply chains.

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Octopus farming is ‘unethical and a threat to the food chain’

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Mass-breeding of the highly intelligent creatures is ecologically unjustified, a new study says

Plans to create octopus farms in coastal waters round the world have been denounced by an international group of researchers. They say the move is ethically inexcusable and environmentally dangerous, and have called on private companies, academic institutions and governments to block funding for these ventures.

The researchers say that farming octopuses would require the catching of vast amounts of fish and shellfish to feed them, putting further pressure on the planet’s already threatened marine livestock.

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‘Stop treating seas as a sewer,’ MPs urge in bid for protection treaty

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Paris agreement for the sea recommended as rates of plastic pollution to skyrocket

A new global agreement to protect the seas should be a priority for the government to stop our seas becoming a “sewer”, according to a cross-party group of MPs.

Plastic pollution is set to treble in the next decade, the environmental audit committee warned, while overfishing is denuding vital marine habitats of fish, and climate change is causing harmful warming of the oceans as well as deoxygenation and acidification.

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