Thursday, December 07, 2017

HOW MANY BRIGG FOLK TRAWL THROUGH PROGRAMMES ON ESTUARY TV?


How many people in Brigg watch Estuary TV?
It serves a swathe of the east coast either side of the Humber, including our area.
We send apologies to the station as we don't watch it as often as we should.
This is partly due to lack of time but also because we have to watch it on our second and smaller telly, which has Freeview (see Channel 8)
As far as we know, Estuary hasn't got a channel you can find among 1,000 on the Sky remote.
Brigg Blog watched some tea-time Estuary TV recently and enjoyed a programme about trawlers and the fishing industry in Grimsby.
Our picture, from the Ken Fisher Collection, shows a vessel in the early 1970s.
If, as expected, the Parliamentary boundary changes go through, come the next general election Brigg will be sharing its MP with some wards in and around Grimsby.
So maybe it's time we brushed up on fishing heritage.
Some are forecasting that, post-Brexit, our pre-1970s fishing limits will be restored, paving the way for British trawlers to go out and collect the cod and haddock that vessels from EU countries won't then be able to touch.

3 comments:

Ken Harrison said...

I do no accept the fake news that the EU ruined our fishing industry.
Remember the 'Icelandic Cod War'...years before we joined the EU, our fishing fleets had over-fished the North Sea of cod and haddock (also accepting the the UK took 90 percent of such fish landings).
The North Sea was at the point of cod and haddock becoming extinct...especially as such fish were longed live and didn't breed until the age of 25ish.
The EU imposed rotas on all countries to preserve existing stocks and allow such species to recovery....which would take 40 to 50 years....without such a measure, the UK deep-fishing industry would have collapsed completely years ago.
Then there's the anti-EU debate that Spanish fishermen were allowed to fish in UK waters....indeed, there were no bans on fish that were plentiful...and the anti-EU statements didn't explain that such foreign fishermen were fishing for sardines, not cod, or haddock.
Now, the levels of cod and haddock have reached sustainable levels and the quotas have been increased accordingly.....it is anticipated that stocks will recovery to full capacity with strict fishing controls.
BREXIT will not mean that UK is free of restrictions, enforced by the nasty EU....without quotas, the UK will again start the process of fishing-fleet suicide...

Unknown said...

uk will have to build from scratch any fishing fleet.

Ken Harrison said...

Globally, Pete, the fish stocks of so-called popular fish such as cod and haddock are so depleted, there is a imminent danger of some stocks becoming extinct in some major fishing areas.
In the 60's, the UK was very concerned about over-fishing in the North Sea...On joining the EU, the UK gladly agreed to quotas.....and thus the long-term action of the EU has actually preserved fish stocks in the North to the point were they're populations are growing to sustainable levels.
Even if we have to build a fishing fleet from scratch, at least, we'll have a fishing fleet.....left to the over-fishing practices, we would have ended up of having no cod/haddock supplies and chippies offering chips and sardines....
Unfortunately, some factions make out the EU compelled the UK to drastically reduce fishing, when, in reality, they were preserving breeding levels and the planned hope that the stocks, as they have done, will attain sustainable levels.
I hope no-one develops the same skewed argument with the debate on elephants/tiger/think levels and claims that the preservationists are the nasty groups stopping folks killing wild beast for trophies, or Chinese medicine..but they will...look at Trump..
.