Predatory ‘rogues’ accused over damage to local fishing gear

Shellfishing boats from Bridlington and along the Holderness coast, say scallop dredgers left a trail of destruction and towed away hundreds of pots over recent weeks. The boats, from Scotland, Isle of Man and Brixham, have been banned from certain waters and face restrictions in the English Channel on conservation grounds.

Local fishermen say at one stage as many as 20 boats were towing dredges up and down a two-mile-long, mile-wide strip in an area called the Silver Pit, “absolutely trashing it”.

Holderness Coast Fishing Industry Group is seeking a meeting with Fisheries Minister Richard Benyon.

Gary Redshaw, skipper of the Innovator, who lost £20,000 worth of gear, said: “They have been thrown out of the English Channel – allegedly for conservation reasons. It is not conservation if they come to another area and trash it.”

There are no quotas set by the EU on scallop fishing and boats roam about the coast, often running into conflict with local fisheries.

They raise hackles because the vessels “plough” the sea bed with heavy steel beams, which dig into the seabed to flip the scallops out of the silt, but in doing so destroy other marine life, including crabs and lobsters.

Hearing the vessels were heading this way, North Eastern Inshore Fisheries and Conservation Authority implemented an emergency bylaw preventing them fishing within six miles of the coast, but it did not stop the boats from fishing – legally – further out.

Mr Redshaw said: “Most of them are good skippers and we haven’t got a problem at all – it is just one or two rogue ones.

“The problem is we have static gear that’s been there for 20 years. It’s the most destructive form of fishing there is.”