Technology welcome

The fishing fleet in Banff and Buchan has never been slow to innovate in terms of technology and the way it operates.

Faced with the enormous challenges involved in securing a sustainable, profitable fishing industry, we have seen significant developments made that have been adopted by other fleets across Europe.

Practices such as Real-Time Closures in areas where large concentrations of young cod are found, have been widely credited for their effectiveness and have been taken on board as standard practice across the European Union.

This measure was driven by the fishing community in Scotland itself and is only successful because skippers accept the need for it to enable continued recovery of fish stocks.

Similarly, advances in fishing technology have been welcomed by the fishing industry when they can help to increase profitability or the sustainability of fish stocks. With this in mind, it is no surprise to find that many in the fishing industry have welcomed a recently announced trial to mount CCTV monitoring equipment on fishing vessels.

While it may seem counter-intuitive that people would welcome the opportunity for others to monitor their activities remotely, many skippers have recognised that the measures being trialled represent an important opportunity to demonstrate the improvements in cod stocks to everyone with an input on setting fishing quotas.

No skipper goes to sea wanting to discard perfectly healthy, marketable fish. If monitoring equipment is able to demonstrate that improvements in the abundance of fish are clearly taking place, then that is something that everybody in the industry would surely approve of.

There is little doubt that the Common Fisheries Policy has been an abject failure and has hugely damaged the fishing industry in Banff and Buchan and across Scotland. This has at last been accepted by the European Commission, and a debate on what is to replace it is beginning; a debate that must see a return to national control of historic fishing sites where the local fishing community that knows what is happening in its own waters is able to influence the policies affecting them.

But until we reach that point, we continue to operate under the system as it stands and the industry needs the means to prove that greater leeway with quotas are needed as fish stocks recover, in order to reduce the practice of discarding marketable fish.

Turriff show

I had the chance to welcome the success of a number of Homecoming related events in this part of Scotland since the start of the year, and I am delighted to be able to do so.

Early estimates of visitor numbers at this year's Turriff Show indicate that they have seen a jump on previous figures.

I am sure that the Homecoming theme will have played a large part in attracting visitors from around the world and closer to home to attend what is truly one of Scotland's premier agricultural shows, but the real credit for this increase belongs to the organisers of the event who once again pulled out all the stops to make it a success.

I was delighted to be able to attend the show and once again hold surgeries with constituents of Banff and Buchan, as other SNP parliamentarians also did over the course of the event.