Ministers to press EU on cod quota

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Ahead of next month's annual haggling over the national share-out of European catch allowances for 2008, Fisheries Minister Jonathan Shaw called for a fair balance between the needs of conservation and the livelihoods of hard-pressed fishing fleets.

He made clear there was scope for boosting fish catches by cracking down hard on the "immoral" practice of dumping dead unwanted fish back in the sea.

Thousands of tonnes of dead fish are discarded every year in EU waters thanks to a Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) catch quota system which effectively encourages trawlermen to throw back small or younger fish of little commercial value.

Mr Shaw said: "The crisis of throwing fish back is immoral. We don't want that to continue so we have to find a balanced range of measures to ensure that the fishing industry is sustainable and that we have the conservation measures in place."

He was echoing EU Fisheries Commissioner Joe Borg who described the practice as "morally wrong" earlier this year.

He called for CFP changes to ban discarding any fish species, backed up with strict national enforcement measures.

Almost 10% of fish catches are discarded, according to the United Nations - but the figure reaches almost 90% in some waters off Scotland and Ireland.

An estimated 880,000 tonnes of dead fish are thrown back into the North Sea each year. The problem is caused by many different fish types swimming together, when fishermen are strictly limited in the types, and quantities, they can catch.

The issue will be key when Mr Shaw and fellow EU fisheries ministers sit down in Brussels next month to settle on catch quotas.