A NORWEGIAN coastguard vessel claims to have spotted two British trawlers dumping large quantities of fish in the North Sea.

Fish Update 31/07/2008

The boat, the KV Leikvin, said it managed to film the incident, but was not able to intervene. The trawlers have not been publicly named as yet.

The dumping of fish, a controversial issue within the UK fishing industry because of the way quotas are regulated, is illegal in the Norwegian controlled sector of the North Sea. In this case the fish was caught in Norwegian waters, but was dumped in the British sector which is permissible under EU regulations.

According to the Norway Post newspaper, the British trawler skipper told the Norwegian coast guard that it did not pay to keep fish measuring less than 80 centimetres. The Norwegian coastguard, further stated that the British trawlers caught a total of 6,642 kilos of cod and saithe (coley). Of this, altogether 5,170 kilos or 78 per cent of the catch was dumped.

The Norwegian fishing grounds are frequently used by fishing vessels from Scotland, the Yorkshire Coast and, occasionally, from the Humber.

The coast guard says that the dumping of fish outside the Norwegian sector is a common occurrence. The Norwegian ban on dumping was introduced in order to prevent overfishing of the fish stocks in that area of the North Sea.

The chance for being caught fishing illegally in Norwegian waters is very small indeed, Mr Lars Fause, the senior public prosecutor in the counties of Tromso and Finnmark stated recently

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