Abstract
In the 2000s, the Dutch beam trawl fleet was in chronic deficit and under pressure to reduce its environmental impact. Instead of converting to selective fishing gears, it successfully lobbied the European Commission with the support of public authorities and scientists to obtain derogations against formal scientific advice to practice a prohibited technique: electric trawling. Since then, electric trawling has expanded beyond regulatory threshold: 84 large trawlers now catch the vast majority of the Dutch flatfish quota, causing detrimental socio-environmental impacts. To assess whether the European Union's fisheries policies fulfilled legal objectives and implemented the 2030 Agenda, it appeared crucial to quantify how much public financial aid had been provided to the Dutch fishing sector for its conversion to electric trawling. The financial information enabling this evaluation was first concealed but was eventually obtained. We show that the institutional opacity surrounding electric trawling was not serendipitous and has served to dissimulate allocations of public monies to a prohibited fishing method (otter trawl), illegal licenses, and falsely ‘scientific’ fishing. In breach of EU laws, 20.8 million EUR of structural funds have so far been granted to this sector in the form of direct subsidies, i.e. over 30 times the amount acknowledged by the fishing industry. The findings presented here lift part of the veil surrounding electric trawling, but the complete reconstruction of the impacts of this fishing method can only be done when decision-makers and scientists disclose all data in full transparency and become the warrants of the public interest.
Highlights
In the waters of the European Union (EU), electric trawling consists in equipping regular beam trawls with electrodes emitting bipolar currents
We estimated that 20.8 million EUR of combined European Fisheries Fund (EFF) and European Maritime and Fisheries Fund (EMFF) European structural funds have been allocated to the development, support, and legitimation of the Dutch electric trawling fleet since 2007 (Fig. 1)
During the period covered by the EFF, 44.6% of the funds transited through fishing companies, 24.2% through industry representatives such as VisNed, Cooperatieve Visserij Organisatie (CVO) and Nederlandse Vissersbond, and 31.1% through other structures
Summary
In the waters of the European Union (EU), electric trawling consists in equipping regular beam trawls with electrodes emitting bipolar currents ( the ‘pulse fishing’ name used by its proponents). The electrodes are meant to replace the usual metallic tickler chains of beam trawlers This technique was first tested by the Netherlands in the 1970s [1], but was widely adopted by the Dutch fishing industry in the late 2000s, at a time when its beam trawl fleet was chronically loss-making [2] and under the threat of a full ban on beam trawling due to its destructiveness [3,4]. This authorization to practice a prohibited fishing method came as a legislative rider through the ‘Total Allowable Catches (TACs) & quotas' regulation, i.e. the text that allocates fishing opportunities to each Member State on a yearly basis This covert trick to grant derogations to a prohibited fishing method was renewed in 2007 [9] and again in 2008 [10], for the years 2008 and 2009 respectively. The Netherlands used an exemption regime, which was tailor-made for them, to grant 22 licences to their national trawlers [7], but from the get-go, these derogations surpassed by three vessels the legal limit arbitrarily proposed by the Commission (Table 1)
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