A supertrawler that provides about 10 per cent of all fish sold in Britain’s chip shops has been unable to sail since Brexit after London failed to retain rights to the most bountiful deep seas.
The ship, which usually catches up to 2.3 million fish a week, previously operated under EU agreements but its permissions for 2021 had not been secured when the trade deal came into force.
The 81-metre Kirkella usually sails in sub-Arctic waters off Norway, Greenland and the Faroe Islands and catches between eight and 12 per cent of the UK's cod and haddock sold in fish and chip shops.
The government said it was still negotiating a permit for the Kirkella, which is based in Hull, in eastern England, and has a crew of about 100.
Hull East MP Karl Turner said the delay was the “last nail in the coffin” for the city’s fishing fleet and appealed to UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson to intervene.
"The Kirkella and its crew have no licences or quotas to fish anywhere and have no guidance as to when, if or to what extent that might change.
“It seems as if this government is hell-bent on putting the last nail in the coffin of distant-waters fishing, just at the time we are meant to be taking back control and giving a desperately needed boost to the fishing sector,” Mr Turner said.
British consumers prefer the cod caught in the North Sea near the Arctic to the mackerel and other species caught in their own waters. The mismatch has caused some of the most bitter moments of the negotiations since Britain voted to leave the EU in 2016.
James Withers, chief executive of Scotland Food & Drink, said Britain could lose its lucrative fish-processing industry as boats reroute from its landing points to countries still in the EU’s single market.
David Henig, director of the UK Trade Policy Project, said he was concerned for the Kirkella's prospects on the North Sea.
“UK-EU trade is being subject to what at least two of my eminent trade Twitter colleagues have called ‘shock therapy’,” Mr Henig tweeted.
UK Fisheries, which owns the trawler, said that without an agreement Britain would become more reliant on imports from Norway or Iceland.
“Previously, fishing opportunities with countries like Norway have been negotiated through the EU, but the UK now has to negotiate in its own right,” said UK Fisheries chief executive Jane Sandell.
“Because the Brexit deal took so long to get going, it means the negotiations hadn’t been done, so we’re now going into a fishing year without any fishing opportunities,” she said.
“The big concern is the crew – we want to get these guys to sea as soon as possible so they can be earning some money and have some certainty for 2021.”
A government representative said: “As an independent coastal state, the UK has put in place new arrangements to further influence the management of near and distant fish stocks to best serve the interests of the British fishing industry.
“Negotiations for fishing opportunities in 2021 will be concluded as soon as possible.”
Meanwhile, fishing businesses in Northern Ireland, which is part of the UK, claim the break with the EU has caused problems for their boats trying to land their catch.
Representatives are calling on the Dublin government to open up its EU harbours to Northern Ireland-registered boats after one catch was turned away after Britain’s transitional ties with the EU ended on December 31.
Alan McCulla of the fishing company SeaSource has asked for reciprocity on both sides of the border. Mr McCulla said seven Northern Ireland ports have been designated for landing catch from Irish boats, but only two at either end of the island for landing fish in the EU.
Who has been sanctioned?
Daniella Weiss and Nachala
Described as 'the grandmother of the settler movement', she has encouraged the expansion of settlements for decades. The 79 year old leads radical settler movement Nachala, whose aim is for Israel to annex Gaza and the occupied West Bank, where it helps settlers built outposts.
Harel Libi & Libi Construction and Infrastructure
Libi has been involved in threatening and perpetuating acts of aggression and violence against Palestinians. His firm has provided logistical and financial support for the establishment of illegal outposts.
Zohar Sabah
Runs a settler outpost named Zohar’s Farm and has previously faced charges of violence against Palestinians. He was indicted by Israel’s State Attorney’s Office in September for allegedly participating in a violent attack against Palestinians and activists in the West Bank village of Muarrajat.
Coco’s Farm and Neria’s Farm
These are illegal outposts in the West Bank, which are at the vanguard of the settler movement. According to the UK, they are associated with people who have been involved in enabling, inciting, promoting or providing support for activities that amount to “serious abuse”.
Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
Band Aid
Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
Six large-scale objects on show
- Concrete wall and windows from the now demolished Robin Hood Gardens housing estate in Poplar
- The 17th Century Agra Colonnade, from the bathhouse of the fort of Agra in India
- A stagecloth for The Ballet Russes that is 10m high – the largest Picasso in the world
- Frank Lloyd Wright’s 1930s Kaufmann Office
- A full-scale Frankfurt Kitchen designed by Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky, which transformed kitchen design in the 20th century
- Torrijos Palace dome
Sole survivors
- Cecelia Crocker was on board Northwest Airlines Flight 255 in 1987 when it crashed in Detroit, killing 154 people, including her parents and brother. The plane had hit a light pole on take off
- George Lamson Jr, from Minnesota, was on a Galaxy Airlines flight that crashed in Reno in 1985, killing 68 people. His entire seat was launched out of the plane
- Bahia Bakari, then 12, survived when a Yemenia Airways flight crashed near the Comoros in 2009, killing 152. She was found clinging to wreckage after floating in the ocean for 13 hours.
- Jim Polehinke was the co-pilot and sole survivor of a 2006 Comair flight that crashed in Lexington, Kentucky, killing 49.
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UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
LILO & STITCH
Starring: Sydney Elizebeth Agudong, Maia Kealoha, Chris Sanders
Director: Dean Fleischer Camp
Rating: 4.5/5
