BRIXHAM CHANGE
Sign our Open Letter & petition to Brixham Fish Market and help change
the world...
If you are an organisation, business, club or group, and you care about the marine environment and the climate & nature crisis- sign our open letter. Your support can change the way we think about biodiversity, and help create a positive vision for coastal communities.
Simply send us an email below confirming your support and we will contact you for a logo to add to the letter.
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Thank you for your support!
OPEN LETTER & PETITION TO BRIXHAM FISH MARKET
Dear Brixham Fish Market,
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You are a hugely profitable company that sold a record £60 million of fish in 2022. You land fish directly from sea and haul it in by truck hundreds of miles across the UK. Your actions are felt globally; vast quantities of your sold fish is exported abroad and your operators have made a significant donation to a political campaign fund. Your influence is wide and profound.
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We are in a nature and climate crisis – and now the time for action is essential. Half of key UK fish stocks are over-fished or at a critically low level. Scientists all over the world have evidenced that beam trawling, scallop dredging and industrial bottom trawling cause biodiversity loss and are unsustainable practices. Unfortunately, much of the fish sold in your market is caught in these ways. Scientists are also clear that these methods contribute to the climate crisis; disturbing the ocean floor releases significant amounts of carbon.
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To do nothing about these damaging practices would not align with the need to support fishers and coastal communities now and in the years to come.
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Just like our supermarkets and retailers, Brixham Fish Market could have a profound and positive effect on the production methods of our food - but it needs to act.
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We ask that Brixham Fish Market and its affiliated organisations align practices with scientific advice and evidence. We ask that you publicly state these highly damaging fishing methods should immediately stop across all Marine Protected Areas as a starting point. This statement would include a clear plan for the Fish Market to cease selling seafood harvested in these damaging ways - for good. And we ask that you call for the full implementation of the UK Fisheries Act, and publicly back Section 25 that links catch allocation to far less damaging catch methods. These actions would ensure that scientific facts drive stewardship of our oceans.
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In the climate & nature crisis we should harness market forces. And -with the taxpayer having given so much funding and support to Brixham’s Fish Market - the British public has a right to expect this national resource is safeguarded for Brixham and the nation to come.
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Technical solutions to reduce dragging and dredging are slow and small, and this wait extends the destruction of our marine ecologies. Our marine environment and the coastal community fishing fleets that make Brixham special are in decline. But with action from you – world famous Brixham Fish Market - the fishing industry can have the clarity and guidance to adapt and change, and thousands of lower impact fishers can flourish.
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Lower impact fishing methods destroy less, create less discard, and leave invaluable marine ecologies less harmed. If Brixham Fish Market banned damaging methods from its suppliers, we would have a healthier shared fishing industry.
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That is why we the petitioners – business leaders, organisations and concerned citizens- call on you to live up to your responsibilities and align sourcing with the scientific facts. It is the least that communities should expect of an immensely profitable company selling a declining public resource. The community of Brixham, the South West, the UK and the world ask you to stand up and be counted on to do the right thing by the national resource from which you profit. Everyone should get to share in the benefits of healthy seas that have been safeguarded, not over extracted through damaging methods.
