MP'S REMINDER OF 'VULNERABILITY AND FRAGILITY' OF OUR OCEANS

During this week’s (December 7) annual debate on the UK fishing industry, many topics came under scrutiny including the health of the marine environment. It  prompted a cordial exchange between  two Labour MPs, Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) and Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby. This is what they said

Ben Bradshaw

I do not know whether you have had an opportunity to watch the wonderful BBC series Blue Planet 2, Madam Deputy Speaker. If you have, you will have been inspired and moved by the wondrousness of our marine environment, but also by its vulnerability and fragility. While environmental degradation on land is visible to us - we see forests and species disappear, and we see desertification - what has been happening in our oceans for far too long has remained invisible to all except a dedicated band of marine scientists and divers. 

Now, thanks to that fantastic programme, it is there for all of us to see.

Melanie Onn

 

When my right hon. Friend watched that programme, was he as concerned as I was by the amount of plastic being ingested by some of the marine life that later goes into our food chain?

Mr Bradshaw

Indeed I was.

Thankfully, plastics are one of the more visible aspects of marine pollution. We see them washed up on our beaches and the Government is  taking action, but a great deal else that goes on is still invisible.

There is another big difference between land-based and sea-based environmental degradation. 

The sea is a place where the ancient human activity of hunting and gathering continues, and continues apace. 

As has just been pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby, (other human activity, such as the use of plastics, has its impacts, but much of it is invisible. 

Man-made climate change is leading to ​the warming and acidification of our oceans, with yet unknown consequences. 

It does not affect just marine life - including fish, as an edible resource - but the roles that the oceans themselves play in regulating our climate, our oxygen levels, and basically everything that makes human life on earth possible.

For most of human history, oceans and fish were simply plundered. 

That did not matter when there were relatively few human beings and fishing technology was relatively antiquated, but, in the last 100 years or so, population growth and technological progress have completely changed that equation, with, in some instances, devastating consequences. 

We all know the story of the near-eradication of bluefin tuna, turtles, cod off the north-east coast of the United States, and, in our own case, cod in the North Sea. 

However, things have changed. Because of what was going on in the early noughties, politicians began to take notice and take action. 

There was collective endeavour, and it has worked. 

North Sea cod has made a fantastic recovery, thanks to the difficult measures and decisions that I took as a Fisheries minister, which were massively criticised by the fishing industry at the time. 

There has even been progress on the high seas, which is much more difficult because of the lack of an international legal framework. 

As anyone - I hope - can appreciate, managing our seas and fish stocks sustainably demands that countries work together. 

As has been said so often during our debates over the years, fish do not respect national borders; they swim about. 

I have real concerns about the potential of Brexit to reverse the welcome progress that we have seen in the last 15 or 20 years. 

Let us be honest: the status quo is not a disaster. My local ports, Brixham and Plymouth, have just reported their best years in terms of the value of their catches.  

Species such as cuttlefish are doing incredibly well, and are being exported straight to markets in Italy, France and Spain. 

Our crab and lobster are also valuable exports. 

* The fishing debate in full: www.grimsbynews.blogspot.co.uk