Fishing for Quotas

This morning, the BBC website and the Today Programme have highlighted the problem of fishermen who have to dump fish, caught in mixed fishing grounds, that is not in their quota. This damages fish stocks but does not help fishermen or consumers.

Those offering their opinions on what has to be done have already called for further reductions in the fishing fleets, which may devastate some local communities, and for the UK to introduce marine reserves, which might help stocks but would not prevent dumping of what is caught outside of those zones.

It may seem a bit of a different topic for the TRG, but I would like to start a conversation with a new suggestion. That would be to move the quotas from the level of the fishing boats to the fish markets themselves. All markets work more effectively when there is increased liquidity. In this case, if any fisherman can bring back any fish to a local market, there would be less thrown over board. However, once a local market had reached their quota, they would not pay the fishermen. This would not be a frequent occurrence as the fishermen already check prices from off shore and could check which market was full - or nearly full - before they left port and while at sea.

Anyone see anything wrong with that idea?