Following the government’s failure at this week’s European Fisheries Council meeting to secure an agreement on threatened bass stocks, the Angling Trust has stepped up its campaign for urgent unilateral action to protect bass stocks in UK waters. The Trust has written to UK Fisheries Minister George Eustice seeking an urgent meeting to discuss a timescale for the introduction of national bass conservation measures.
The recreational sea angling sector, which is worth £2.1 billion and 23,600 jobs to the UK economy, feels badly let down by the government which has persistently refused to take unilateral action on the basis that an EU breakthrough was pending. To make matters worse, Ministers are claiming to have secured "a fair deal for fisheries", despite the failure to take any measures on bass in response to the International Council for the Exploration of the Seas’ (ICES) recent call for an immediate 80% reduction in bass landings to avoid a total stock collapse.
-> Read the entire press release at the Angling Trust website