U.K. fishermen should be able to catch hundreds of thousands of tons more fish upon the country’s departure from the EU because the industry will be in a position to overhaul “unfair” fishing quotas, according to Fisheries Minister George Eustice.
The minister told The Daily Telegraph that it was “pretty clear” Brexit could be a good deal for fishermen because the country would “regain control” of quotas and be in a position to strike new reciprocal arrangements with the EU that would give its fishermen a greater share of catches in British waters and abroad.
The equation is that EU fishermen have 1 million metric tons (MT) of U.K. fish and U.K. fishers get about 150,000 MT of fish of various species, said Eustice, adding that the hope would be to get a much better deal, particularly with cod and plaice.
He highlighted the “imbalance” that in the English Channel the French fishermen get twice as much plaice and three times as much Dover sole as their U.K. counterparts.
Eustice believes that fishermen in the Channel and the Westcountry could particularly benefit from reforms to fishing quotas, and stressed that Britain's share of plaice and sole in the Channel was incredibly low with a similar situation for cod and haddock in the Celtic Sea.
Last year, U.K. fishing vessels landed 409,181 MT of fish, crustaceans, and mollusks, a 13 percent decrease from 2014, achieving a total first-sales value of EUR 721.4 million (USD 796.6 million), down 1 percent.
