English crabbers fishing off the southwest of Jutland are are posing a problem for Danish sandeel boats with incorrectly marked crab pots
Sandeel fishing has faced setbacks in the first few weeks off the southwest coast of Jutland, with English crab fishers causing issues for Danish fishermen, reports Danish fishing news outlet, Fiskeri Tidende.
In April, fishermen landed 2,600 tonnes compared to 22,900 tonnes in the same month last year.
Sandeel catches have been scarce in the northern fishing grounds, and Danish fishermen are also denied access to fish for sandeel in UK waters.
As a result, sandeel fishing has been concentrated around the fishing grounds off the southwest coast of Jutland, but here, fishermen have encountered another problem: English crab fishing boats using unmarked traps.
This has been reported by Hvide Sande fisherman Steffan Slot Søgaard, who operates the vessel RI 317 Nordlys.
“They have placed traps on the banks where we usually fish, and they are not marked correctly. According to Danish legislation, they should put out buoys, but they have just put out some red stakes. It’s a huge problem. One of my colleagues smashed a trawl because of it yesterday. It will probably cost him between 30,000 and 50,000 kroner to repair,” says Steffan Slot Søgaard speaking to Fiskeri Tidende.
“We have informed the authorities about it, but they don’t believe they have the resources to do anything about it,” he says.
Steffan Slot Søgaard explains that it is particularly a problem on the Horns Rev, 038, and Den Lysegrønne banks.
“It is completely grotesque that the English first close off our ability to fish in their waters, and then they subsequently take our best fishing grounds, even without marking correctly. These are very large areas we are talking about. It’s not like with the net fishermen who place their nets in a row, which we can then trawl alongside. They just place them over a huge area where we cannot be. We can’t even communicate with them. Frankly, we are getting to the point where if they don’t soon rectify it, then we may have to help them clean up,” he says.
Thomas Sloth, chairman of the Southwest Jutland Fishermen’s Association, believes it is a general problem that English crab fishers do not mark their traps properly, and the areas they mark are far too large.
“Therefore, my clear message to the authorities is that they need to focus more on these English fishermen. It’s about both ensuring that the equipment is properly marked and that it is retrieved after use to avoid ghost traps in the fishing grounds,” says Sloth.
The vast majority of sandeel caught this year has been landed at Hvide Sande Harbour.