By Paul Homewood

h/t Dennis Ambler

Remember how many times we have been told that climate change was wiping out the poor puffins?

The Sunday Times reveals the real story:

Puffins and other seabirds are unable to feed their young after Danish vessels stripped British waters of sand eels worth up to £80m.

The Danes control 94% of the quota for UK sand eels and last year persuaded the EU to let them increase their annual take from 82,000 to 458,000 tons a year.

Most of the catch, taken around Dogger Bank in the North Sea, was crushed into fishmeal for Denmark’s intensive salmon, mink and livestock farms.

The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds fears that seabirds such as puffins and kittiwakes, which rely on sand eels to feed their young, face a disaster because so few eels remain. The charity has urged Michael Gove, the environment secretary, to use Brexit to “take back control” and end the reign of the Danish trawlers.

“We favour a total ban on fishing of sand eels and other forage fish species like sprat, which seabirds use as an alternative to sand eel in the UK part of the North Sea,” said Euan Dunn, principal marine adviser of the RSPB.

Denmark’s huge share of the sand eel fishery dates from 1983, when the EU approved the “relative stability principle”, under which the share of each species was based on the proportion caught by member countries in the past. It means fish quotas are allocated according to catch records from the 1970s.

British fishermen then had no interest in sand eels, so Denmark got nearly all the quota and still has it now.

There is growing evidence that seabird colonies are being wiped out, especially kittiwakes and puffins. In this century the sand eel stock has collapsed with Denmark allowed only 82,000 tons in 2016. Seabird numbers fell, too, but in 2017 Denmark’s fisheries minister persuaded the EU to allow a 5.5-fold increase in sand eel catches.

Gerry Smart, a fisheries consultant, said: “They know Brexit is coming and they are determined to get as much as they can in case Britain ends the fishery.”

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/puffins-starve-as-danes-grab-uk-sand-eels-srwrfgdrs

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September 8, 2019 at 11:36AM