Views sought on fishing after Brexit
Adam Guest“What will Brexit mean for your fishing community?” – was the question posed by university academics this week.
But sadly the public event on Wednesday night at the Thule Bar in Lerwick did not pull in visitors to share their views.
However, it followed on from a visit earlier that day by John Connolly, reader in public policy, and politics lecturer Craig
McAngus, both from the University of the West of Scotland, who gave a lecture at the NAFC Marine Centre.
Dr Connolly and Dr McAngus are holding a number of events around the UK to see how local people feel about the future of their community and the impact of Britain leaving the EU.
At the Lerwick bar event Dr Connolly said: “We met with colleagues at the NAFC as part of the University of Highlands and Islands.
“They have got a keen interest in our research because although they do a lot of work on marine science and so on, they are less attuned to the wider public policy and politics of Brexit around fisheries.
“Essentially what we are trying to do is try and go to them with some of the big questions and big issues we’ve found from some of the learning, with regards to the experience of other countries that aren’t members of the EU, but have fisheries agreements with the EU.”
Both men have been involved in a report called “Governing UK fisheries after Brexit – Lessons from Iceland, Norway and the Faroe Islands”.
It includes a number of recommendations on the back of the case studies.
• More in this week’s Shetland Times
Ali Inkster
if the editor and reporters of the Shetland times looked out their office windows they might notice the vast amounts of fish being loaded straight onto EU trucks by EU boats. Not a fisheries officer to be seen while the catch is being unloaded They seem to wear the same blinkers members of ST staff do. There is a huge amount of benefit we could get from brexit but not if the politicians are unwilling to do the right thing and the press does not hold them to account. Frankly the media in Shetland has failed in it’s duty to the community it claims to serve.