20-05-2025
'Like octopus, the UK/EU deal is a mixed blessing for the SW'
The population spike in the Mediterranean common octopus is a mixed news if you want to catch crab or lobster, and doubly bad news if the octopus eats your crab or lobster and then escapes so you do not get to land an octopus octopus is valuable catch in its own right - a fishmonger once told me a story about a crab boat which returned to port with pots full of octopus which had eaten all the captive crabs. The octopus earned the crabber almost twice as much as the crabs would have done.
'Used and abused'
But the lucrative market for the octopus - like most of our native fish and shellfish - lies across the Channel in continental UK/EU deal is another mixed blessing for the South the UK catching sector - the people who risk life and limb going to sea - it's another huge disappointment, if hardly a campaigners during the EU referendum campaign talked up a bright future for the industry outside the Brexit deal struck by Boris Johnson's government in 2020 did return some fish quota to the UK - though the main beneficiary was the pelagic fleet in great failing in the eyes of the industry was its failure to exclude EU boats from the UK's six to twelve-mile (10 to 19km) inshore Cornish Fish Producers' Organisation said the industry had been "used and abused".
Inshore waters access
The Johnson government suggested a better outcome could be brokered when the deal came up for review in we have reached that point and the present government has agreed to foreign access in inshore waters continuing for at least another 12 plans to remove regulatory barriers for exports are - so to speak - another kettle of fish we left the European Single Market, selling fish to France was a simple as selling it within the we left - and under the terms of the Johnson deal - a raft of complicated and costly regulation engulfed exports to the businesses warned they were struggling to cope with something which had previously been so say they have since seen huge cuts to their trade. The especially unlucky ones have gone under - blaming Brexit and its rules in question apply not just to fish but to food exports more them away could allow many business to recover and expand - and, in some cases - stay in business in the first place.
