In 2021, the then Minister of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality, Carola Schouten, went to the European Court of Justice to overturn the ban on pulse fishing. Schouten argued in court that the 2019 ban “was not based on the best available scientific advice.” She caught flounder, which put an end to this very sustainable form of fishing, according to Holland.
Schouten was right in the end. After the ban, this research accelerated, to prove that pulse fishing does not turn the sea into a “desert”, where everything – plankton, fish, benthic – “stuns” and dies, as the French claimed. .
Shelf gas research
The final report, created thanks to all these research efforts, was delivered by WUR researcher Adrian Reinsdorp in May 2020. The report showed that pulse fishing is environmentally better than fishing with heavy streamers. “There is less bycatch, more sea bass are caught in a shorter time, lighter gear damages the bottom less, and pulse fishing costs less fuel,” we wrote here on Foodlog at the time.
According to Pim Visser, director of the Dutch fishing trade association Wiesend, the Netherlands was in a strong position. He said: “In any case, it is certain that the decision of the European Council and Parliament that led to the pulse ban was not supported by facts, even though that is a legitimate matter.”
Read more here on Foodlog.nl
