THE SCALLOP WAR

In the news last week was the ongoing war between British and French fleets. No, we haven't rolled back the clock a couple of hundred years or so, and the fleets are not military - at least not yet. The boats at war are fishing vessels, with the French ramming the English and throwing projectiles at the mariners, and the dispute is all about scallops. The French fleet outnumber the English 35 to five, so it is hardly a fair fight and some of the English fishermen have called for the Royal Navy to defend the fleet while they trawl for scallops in international waters off the Norman and Breton coasts. It all seems very farcical, especially when one considers that the third world is overrunning both countries on a daily basis, and the Lügenpresse like Le Figaro and the Daily Mail do so love to distract the masses with a bit of phony patriotism when it suits, but there are some very serious issues that no one seems to be addressing.

 

 

 

The dispute has arisen from a difference in law between the two countries and been exacerbated by the looming Brexit. The French are not allowed to catch scallops between 16th May and 31st September, whereas the British can fish all year round. The French fishermen are, however, compensated by much higher state benefits than the ones in the UK. The dispute has been going on for fifteen years, but has escalated as Brexit has fueled tensions, as the fishermen of  various nationalities fight over stocks before the international waters again become national closed ones. The French are complaining that the British are exploiting too near to the Norman and Breton coastlines, which is not an argument, as they are international waters in the same way as French, Norwegian and Spanish fleets have exploited formerly British waters and have taken 60% of the fish caught in these waters since Britain joined the European Union. Bear in mind that British waters were vast, as one can see from the map below in which the former British seas are highlighted in blue. The current French national waters stretch to twelve miles out and the English vessels have been fishing fifteen miles out.

The French have also cited the environmental impact as a problem and here they have a very good point. The whole point of the French closed season is to allow for scallop stocks to be replenished during spawning. The British exploitative dredging method also leads to the sea bed becoming barren and the French use more traditional trawling nets. One only has to look at how many parts of the North Sea were left bereft of cod stocks by over-fishing and use of micro-mesh trawls even before Britain entered the EU. However, British fishermen are banned from catching bluefin tuna to replenish stocks, while the French are not. Last Monday, French fishermen caught 44 tuna worth over €100,000 off the coast of Jersey. The French government are also simultaneously offering subsidies to new fishing boat owners in Lower Normandy under the age of forty, which potentially increases competition and leads to over-fishing. And I suspect the subsidies are aimed at ethnically diversifying the fishing industry in that region, as almost all involved in the industry there are from native families who have done it for generations. If both French and British fishermen had any sense, they would realise that both their own governments have caused the problem because, as usual, they have a complete lack of understanding of how the world works.

 

The problem with both socialist and capitalist systems is the same in this instance: they rely on the principle of economic growth. Yet something has to give in a world where resources are finite. Only a return to traditionalism can save the environment. Consumerist societies are unsustainable, to use a buzzword the elites are so fond of abusing. This means populations have to remain stable and in tune with their habitat. Importing the third world will do nothing but deplete seafood already becoming scarce. Eventually, it will lead to the extinction of species. Notice how the price of seafood has escalated over the past twenty to thirty years. This is because hauls are getting smaller as fish and crustaceans become scarcer. Yet if the governments had wisdom, the British one would order a return to traditional trawling methods and impose a closed season, the French one would ban the fishing of endangered species and stop giving subsidies to grow the industry, and they would both realise that an industry can be grown in the creation of coastal fish farms to breed fish that would replenish the seas. I do not, however, expect any such wisdom from the present dispensation of governance, which is why more people need to get involved in Radical Rightist politics in the proper sense.