We are a serious charity with three really important aims: marine conservation, research and education, however, what makes us unique is that our work is specifically related to a commercial species – The European Lobster.
This is a species that is worth a huge amount in terms of both its economic and social importance. The species is the most valuable fish caught in the UK and is part of a major export industry. This one species alone is worth £30m each year and I know that without it the small coastal villages, such as Port Isaac where I live, would have very little other than tourism to create jobs and keep the harbour alive.
The problem is one of global food security for future generations and the timescale is scarily short. Fisheries around the world are suffering from major over-exploitation. The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations state that over 75% of the world’s major fisheries are either: fully exploited, over-exploited, depleted or recovering.
Lobster stocks themselves are incredibly vulnerable and both the Scandinavian and Mediterranean stocks have completely collapsed and not recovered to this day.
The world population is set to rise to over 9 billion over the next few decades. The world’s middle classes are due to swell and the demand for seafood is due to expand massively.
It is clear to me at least, that additional measures are required in order to improve the way we treat our living marine resources and this is why our work is so important.
We have already established ourselves as a centre for excellence in lobster science – we have published numerous papers ad presented our work on the world stage and welcome over 40,000 visitors through our public education centre each year.
A female lobster can carry in the region of 20,000 eggs under their abdomen, however only one of these is expected to survive in the wild. With skilful and careful application of modern technology we can improve this survival rate by about 1000 times! We released over 32,000 last year and aim to double this shortly. We are even undertaking a population modelling exercise that will help us to define how many lobsters we should release in a given year.
Our dreams for the short term future are a little broader: We have a vision that aims to create the world’s first public education centre for fisheries sustainability issues. This centre will engage with the general public and educate them of the key sustainability issues associated with fisheries (something that is in the press all of the time). At the same time we will provide solutions to those issues. This is something that we are already doing very well and is something that is not currently done by anyone else in the world.
The amendment to the shellfish act that Baroness Wilcox talked about will provide long term security to our communities and will enable us to sell juvenile lobsters to the fishery itself and provide regular income for our work, however, until orders have been taken up by the industry, this still remains firmly in the future.
Raising the funds for our work is not easy. We don’t receive any recurrent government funding and rely heavily upon funds generated through our visitor centre.
On my way up here today one thought was going through my head - how can our charity compete with the humanitarian charities?
The answer is simple: give a man a fish and he can feed his family for a day, give him a fishing net and he can feed his family for a month. However if the seas around his village have been overfished then he can do neither…. Our charity is about feeding families and it is looking at the next step – how can we increase the number of fish that are there to be caught and how can we apply this to our fisheries.
We have several people here tonight who have made substantial contributions to our work: Fishmongers Company have supported us for many years, Lord Harris of Peckham provided a donation that has allowed us to set up the Harris Scholarship fund, John Rous holds a lobster festival each year in Clovelly of which we are the beneficiary and Matthew Sankey collects donations on every lobster he sells through his restaurant and matches his customers donation.
Please be generous tonight – we will spend your money very carefully – we are incredibly efficient and have achieved a huge amount so far with very little.
Lords Ladies and Gentlemen please enjoy your evening and do whatever you can to support our work.
Thank you very much.
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