Making Crime Pay

Here's a story from The Times that makes the law and the fisheries policy of the European Union look like a complete ass.

Because how does it make any kind of sense for the owners of a fishing vessel to keep their ill-gotten gains worth a minimum of £437,000 while imposing a fine of only £97,000 plus costs of £5,000.

Amazing.

Because such a paltry fine represents a clear incentive for those responsible to do the same thing again and their willingness to exploit a protected area shows that they have no interest in the long-term future of the fishing industry. 

Dutch trawler allowed to keep £437,000 illegal mackerel haul


The master and owner of the trawler were fined £97,000 Joost J. Bakker

By Ben Webster - The Times

The owner of a Dutch super-trawler that was caught fishing illegally by the Royal Navy has been allowed to sell its haul for £437,000 while being fined a fraction of the profits.

The Frank Bonefaas was found to be carrying 632,000kg of mackerel that it had caught in a protected area off southwest England, where fishing is restricted. Juvenile mackerel gather in the area and the restrictions are designed to allow them to reach maturity and prevent the stock from collapsing.

Fisheries protection officers from HMS Severn boarded the 120m trawler in March last year and found the illegal haul, the biggest detected in recent years. The mackerel is all believed to have been caught inside the protected area.

The master and owner of the trawler pleaded guilty last Friday at Bodmin magistrates’ court in Cornwall. They were fined £97,000 and ordered to pay costs of £5,000.

The Marine Management Organisation, the government agency which brought the prosecution, admitted yesterday that Cornelis Vrolikj BV, the Dutch company that owns the trawler, had been allowed to keep the catch.

A spokeswoman said that the MMO had invited the court to consider imposing a fine that would match the full value of the haul but it had chosen not to do so. The Frank Bonefaas is owned by the same Dutch company that owns the Cornelis Vrolijk, a super-trawler that controls almost a quarter of England’s fish quota.

The small-scale fishing industry, categorised as boats under 10m long, has just 4 per cent of the quota but makes up nearly 80 per cent of off-shore fishing jobs.

Teresa Portmann, a marine consultant, said that the MMO’s estimate of the value of the mackerel found on the Frank Bonefaas was conservative and that the haul could have been worth more than £750,000.

She said the case would encourage operators of super-trawlers to see fines as just another cost of doing business.

Ms Portmann added that the MMO had more than halved the number of inspections of vessels at sea — from 1,300 in 2010 to 600 in 2013. This meant that there was less chance of catching trawlers fishing illegally, she said.

Andrew Beattie, the MMO’s chief operating officer, said: “The enforcement of fishing activity has evolved and the number of sea inspections has fallen. The MMO are moving away from the traditional reliance on sightings and inspections because of the introduction of vessel monitoring and electronic log books to monitor fishing activity. The MMO believes that at-sea enforcement provided by the Royal Navy and supplemented by inshore patrols is sufficient to meet our obligations.”

Ariana Densham, Greenpeace’s oceans campaigner, said that the case showed the need for tougher restrictions. She said: “We need the government to take a stand to put local, low- impact fishermen first, who directly contribute to our crumbling coastal economies and better protect the marine environment.”