Your Voices Have Been Heard

Dear supporter Thanks to all of you who have supported us so far. An amazing 17,000 supports have signed our petition and the French language version. Don't stop here though! While 17,000 is fantastic it shows how difficult it is to reach the millions of people across Europe who enjoy fishing and would be affected by these proposals. Please keep sharing and re-sharing the petition to everyone you know. Your letter has now been sent to the Council of Fisheries Ministers in advance of the Agriculture and Fisheries Council meeting in Brussels on Monday 11th and Tuesday 12th December. We will be there to ensure that the fight to protect rights of members of the public to fish recreationally continues. To follow updates on the outcome of the meeting you can follow the European Anglers Alliance on Twitter at @AnglersAlliance and the European Fishing Tackle Trade Association at @EfttaEfttex News of the outcome of the meeting will be available from the EAA website http://www.eaa-europe.org/ and we will, of course, update you here on the petition page. The science behind the Commission's proposal is pretty 'novel' and since the petition was started it has been acknowledged that robust trend data is lacking for the bass fishery which has relied too much on scientific modelling and assumptions which we believe don't give an accurate picture of fishing mortality and the state of stock. New figures and modelling are under way from ICES. We believe this data will show that the state of the Northern bass stock is not as dire as currently assessed and that recreational fishing is not a threat to the stock. We understand some revised data will be available before Monday's Council meeting, which will support this. Thanks again for your support so far. The fight continues!