Exclusive: Overfishing “doesn’t create jobs, it loses them”

The recent report by Blue Marine Foundation, Apocalypse Now: The True Cost of Overfishing launched on 14 September, argues that the UK government repeatedly prioritises short-term concerns over long-term environmental and economic sustainability.

UK fisheries management has a straightforward starting point: follow scientific advice on sustainable catch levels. Yet, Blue Marine finds that this is often ignored. According to government figures, 58% of UK fishing quotas were set above scientifically advised sustainable levels in 2026.

For Jonny Hughes, the aim of the Blue Marine report is to “start setting catch limits in line with advice”. As he puts it, “this is their policy, not ours”, arguing that the problem lies not with the stated commitment, but rather a failure of implementation.

A ceiling, not a target

Blue Marine’s analysis found that 62% of the 55 UK fish stocks assessed had declined since 2016, while the total amount of fish across those stocks fell by around 41%. The decline has also been accompanied by economic pressure on the fishing industry, with government figures showing that UK fishing opportunities were worth £136 million less in 2026 than in 2025.

Hughes comparing regional approaches points out financial repercussions of overfishing, and the pressure that therefore falls onto the fishing industry:

“The approach adopted in the North Sea has been to fish miles under the advice and the advice in the Celtic Sea has been to fish miles over. The industry in the North Sea haddock and whiting makes a fortune. They catch everything they need. They can’t catch their quota. They don’t need to – you can’t sell it. Whereas in the Celtic Sea the stocks have now collapsed.”

The contrast, for Hughes, challenges the idea that tighter fishing limits work against the industry’s economic interests, instead overfishing far from creating jobs, “loses them”.

When asked whether scientific advice should become an absolute “legal ceiling” if the government implements its stated policy, Hughes made a clear distinction: the advice should be treated as a “limit, not a target”. The distinction becomes particularly important when stocks are already severely depleted. Hughes explains that a catch can be low, but “still be too high if the stock is even worse”.

“Using Celtic cod again as a regular example, a couple of years ago, the [government] quota was set higher than the total number of adult fish”. “Unsurprisingly” Hughes adds “that didn’t work”.

For Hughes, the example demonstrates why catch limits need to be underpinned by binding rules, rather than left open to short-term political pressure. He points to models implemented in the US, where, as he puts it, “the law is the law, and it has to be followed”.

“We’ve called for these long-term recovery plans which would be built on the American model […] they had some very severely depleted stocks as well and they put in place these legally binding pre-agreed rules”.

Hughes does, however, see some scope for changing how scientific advice is framed, focused instead on how the stock could recover over a predetermined frame time.

“The advice would still be an absolute ceiling, but it wouldn’t be necessarily made using the same framework they use now,” he says.

Compliance to be monitored

Yet, setting limits is only part of ensuring they work in practice. Hughes sees remote electronic monitoring (REM) as a key part of ensuring compliance with legislation and preventing discarding from hiding the extent of overfishing.

Discarding can help the official quota look sustainable when the number of fish lost are a lot higher. Hughes notes that, although discarding is illegal in the EU and UK, ineffective enforcement means it can continue to contribute to overfishing while the true scale of discards remains hidden.

“It used to be that estimated discards were removed from your quota to try and account for them. You know, sustainably you could catch 100 tons, but we think you’re going to discard 20, your quota would be 80 to try and account for that. Whereas now, once it became illegal to discard, rather than enforce the obligation […] 100 tons became 100 tons, but you would still be discarding 20.’

To fix this form of hidden overfishing Blue Marine suggests the implementation of REM, so numbers of discard become an acknowledged part of the quota, rather than simply part of an estimate. Stating fish to be “a public asset, public resource”, Hughes argues the “public have a right to know what happens”. He finds that “some of the arguments against cameras are an implicit acknowledgement that people wouldn’t like what they saw”.

In terms of the monitoring of the cameras, Hughes suggests a practical implementation of REM. “Although our report does say put cameras on all vessels, we don’t mean all vessels at the same time”, highlighting how larger vessels would be the priority, likely to have higher levels of discarded fish.

Seeking abundance

Hughes states that without any change “there will be no recovery of the already depleted stocks, and more stocks will join that list”.

For Hughes, however, recovery is not only about bringing depleted stocks back from the brink. “It’s about abundance everywhere else,” he says, pointing to North Sea haddock, whiting and plaice, where biomass is currently five to six times the BMSY level used as the legal reference point. The more fish there are in the sea, he argues, “the more profitable the fishing industry is because it can catch the amount it needs with less effort’.

“Let’s get to where they claim they want to be first. Then we’ll look at getting everything to where North Sea haddock, North Sea whiting and North Sea plaice are.”