Fishing banned in 200 square mile oil slick

NICHOLAS SCHOON

Environment Correspondent

The Government yesterday outlawed fishing in a 300-square -mile exclusion zone around the oil-slicked Pembrokeshire coastline.

The Welsh Office's action, made on safety grounds following the supertanker Sea Empress running aground 13 days ago, puts an indefinite halt to a pounds 20 million-a-year industry. The Welsh fishing grounds have been booming in the past two years thanks to lucrative whelk exports to South Korea and Japan.

The decision to limit fishing follows monitoring of oil levels in a range of fish, shellfish and seaweed. Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries scientists have found oil levels 100 times or more above the normal background concentration in molluscs inside the large inlet of Milford Haven.

The exclusion zone stretches from the Gower Peninsular near Swansea some 50 miles west to beyond St David's Head and Ramsey Island, at least five and a half miles out to sea - and in some places much further.

Coastal fishermen will now seek compensation from the oil- spill funds run by tanker insurers and owners and the major oil companies.

"I'm not really interested in compensation, I just want to get on with fishing," said David Bray, Secretary of the Welsh Coastal Fishermen's Association yesterday. "At 53 I'm too old for any other job. We have our own way of life down here and it has been devastated."

The region's fishermen had operated their own voluntary exclusion zone since the Sea Empress began to spill its 130,000 tonnes of North Sea crude. But after several days of fine, calm weather they had been itching to get back on the water in their small boats.

Pembrokeshire's near-shore fishery, for which Milford Haven is the largest port, is biased towards molluscs, crabs, lobsters and crawfish rather than fish. The fishermen worry that the exclusion zone covering the non- fish species will last for years.

After the Braer oil spill in 1993, the exclusion order for shellfish catches in Shetland waters lasted nearly two years, and that for scallops for over two years. Today it is still forbidden to fish for prawns and mussels in some Shetland waters.

The local fishing industry has quickly organised the Sea Empress Fishermen's Claimants Association with some 300 members. The organisation embraces processors, land-based "cocklemen" and even a few full-time winkle-pickers as well as fishermen with about 250 boats.

The big success story of the past two summers has been the whelk fishery with exports to the Far East. The two-inch long snails have been fetching pounds 500 a tonne and a competent fisherman can catch a tonne a day using baited pots. Three years ago hardly any were caught off Pembrokeshire but this summer many fishermen, some of them outsiders, were planning to catch whelks in shallow waters like those of Carmarthen Bay.

"Fishermen are hunters of the sea and they were going to go for it," said Nick O'Sullivan, chairman of the Association. The fishermen say sales are booming because the South Koreans believe the molluscs have aphrodisiac properties.

Mr O'Sullivan said he had been taking calls from fishermen "yelling down the phone" because they wanted to get out on the water.

The Welsh Office order also covers seaweed and samphire, a plant which grows in salt marshes and is eaten with fish.

The oil spill's toll on local wildlife continues to mount rapidly, and last night the number of oiled seabirds rescued was approaching 3,000. An increasing proportion of the birds are now being washed up dead on the beaches. Three heavily oiled seals, apparently still healthy, have been seen among a group of 120 on Skomer Island, one of the region's most important nature reserves.

n The Prince of Wales is due to make a two-hour visit to Milford Haven this morning, arriving by the royal train at nearby Haverfordwest. He is not expected to visit the heavily slicked beaches of Carmarthen Bay.

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