The intervention of the MEP from the PP, Gabriel Mato, in the Fisheries Committee of the European Parliament held last week has outraged the San Ginés Fishermen's Association. “Industrial fishing sustainable? But listen, you don't even know what fishing is. That's how clearly I would say it to his face, that he doesn't know what fishing is,” questioned the senior skipper of this historic Lanzarote association, Aquilino Arrocha.
“They want to pull the wool over our eyes to look good in front of the Canary Islands”, Arrocha denounces, who recalls that the MEP began by talking about artisanal fishing, demanding a “differentiated treatment” for it and defending that it is “a fundamental feature” of the islands. However, immediately afterwards he ended up comparing it with industrial fishing.
“Not only does artisanal fishing have a low impact on the marine environment,” but “large-scale fishing can be perfectly sustainable and have a low impact on the environment, and, in that case, article 17 grants them the right to receive the same treatment,” the MEP defended in Parliament. He even stated that “we should avoid creating unnecessary competition between small and large-scale fishing.”
“Is that sustainable?”
“It turns out that the seiners, those that they call sustainable, that Spain is calling sustainable, are killing offspring below 2 kilos. Let's see if you tell me that that is sustainable, when the repopulation of tuna is from 20 kilos upwards, between 20 and 23,” criticizes the skipper of the San Ginés Fishermen's Association.
In addition, after recalling that in the Canary Islands they do not give quotas for seiners, he has questioned the limits that are assigned to the archipelago for traditional fishing, both for bluefin tuna and obese tuna. “The quotas we have now in the Canary Islands for both species are ridiculous,” he laments.
In the case of bluefin tuna, it is about 500 tons per year. “If we are going to catch that, we catch it in a month and a half. And of tuna, between artisanal and pole-and-line tuna boats we have about 2,300,” he points out. In addition, he recalled that last year, the artisanal fishermen had to be stopped “practically from the beginning,” when their quota ran out. “They endured fishing for a month or so,” he laments.
