Soaring fuel prices will sink us for good, warn fishermen

Lochhead calls crisis summit as skippers reveal they are forking out £1,000 a day

By Keith Findlay

Published:

Spiralling fuel costs are on the brink of putting Scotland’s fishing boats out of business, skippers claimed last night.

Fisheries Minister Richard Lochhead has called a crisis meeting with industry leaders in Aberdeen on Monday.

It follows Mallaig and North-West Fishermen’s Association warning that high fuel prices are crippling livelihoods and could force skippers to quit.

Costs for many skippers have doubled in a year.

Skipper and TV star Jimmy Buchan warned last night that boats will go out of business as a direct result of soaring fuel costs.

Mr Buchan, speaking from his Peterhead-registered Amity II, said record oil prices were putting the catching sector under severe strain.

“There will almost certainly be casualties this year. The situation has become critical for the whole viability of the Scottish fishing fleet.

“Fuels costs are on everybody’s mind just now.”

Mr Buchan, probably the UK’s best-known skipper after he and his vessel starred in two series of the BBC’s Trawlermen programme, said it was particularly galling for Scottish boats to be struggling with higher fuel costs when energy companies were pumping vast amounts of oil out of the North Sea.

He is paying £1,000 a day for fuel, whereas a year ago his outlay was around £560.

Industry leaders are due to meet Mr Lochhead in Aberdeen on Monday to discuss the growing crisis.

Scottish Fishermen’s Federation chief executive Bertie Armstrong said: “This is no longer just a mild irritation. Parts of the sector are facing a significant threat to their viability and are already having to change their behaviour.”

He said that skippers were having to more carefully weigh up when to go to sea rather than risk a potentially wasted journey.

“If, as many people are predicting, the cost of fuel is going to stay at this level for the foreseeable future, then we have to address the hard question of where our industry goes from here,” he said.

“We are not crying wolf over this. The fuel cost situation is now very serious.”

The Scottish industry has been calling for some time for a level playing field amid concerns that fishermen in France and Spain are being compensated by their governments for the large increases in fuel costs.

Scottish White Fish Producers’ Association executive chairman Mike Park said: “We want nothing more but also nothing less than fishermen in other member states of the European Union are getting.

“We expect to be treated in the very same fashion.”

Mr Park said that unlike other industries, the catching sector was unable to pass on higher fuel costs.

“We have no direct input in the amount we get for our product and so are very vulnerable,” he added.

One answer could be to gear the EU’s European Fisheries Fund towards helping to make vessels more fuel efficient, Mr Park suggested.

Peterhead Port Authority chief executive John Wallace said there was already evidence of a downturn in catching activity, with boats spending more time at Europe’s busiest white-fish port instead of going to sea.

“They are not fishing as hard or seeking out new fishing grounds,” he added.