Illegal cockle pickers return to Morecambe Bay (From The Westmorland Gazette)

Illegal cockle pickers return to Morecambe Bay

9:40am Thursday 13th October 2011 in Morecambe news By Scott Kirk, Reporter

ILLEGAL cocklers are once again targeting the treacherous sands of Morecambe Bay under cover of darkness.

The revelation has sparked renewed safety fears seven years after the disaster that saw 23 Chinese cocklers die in the Bay off Hest Bank.

And local fishermen are calling for ‘tougher’ action on anyone caught out on the sands – where cockle beds are still officially out of bounds.

Reports that covert cockling operations had been taking place late at night, on the closed beds and at low tide, sparked an investigation by fisheries officials.

And when one of the officers visited the Flookburgh area, he found bags of harvested cockles concealed at the edge of a marsh near Humphrey Head.

Four Polish fishermen were also found on the shore with cockle harvesting equipment.

A transit van with a trailer attached was seen on a separate visit and two quad bikes were observed making their way out on to the sands.

All the people involved were given verbal warnings – which has led to criticism from fishermen who believe the authorities should be tougher.

North western inshore fisheries and conservation authority officer Colin Britton, who covers the shore from Haverigg to Arnside, said his belief that illegal cockling was not taking place had been “turned upside down” by the events.

“Continued monitoring of activities in the early hours will continue as well as on daytime tides to see if any patterns of activity emerge and we will implement a strategy to interrupt and if possible bring this activity to an end,” said Mr Britton.

Dr Stephen Atkins, the authority;’s chief executive, said: “Clearly there is a level of poaching that has been attempted.

“Over the last winter, when stocks were very low, there wasn’t any significant risk of poaching but as the summer has gone on, the cockles have grown and we then started to see incidents.”

Licencing laws for Morecambe Bay were tightened in 2007 in the wake of the 2004 cockling disaster, and a new scheme also restricted the number of permits issued to fishermen.

But a perceived lack of action taken against the illegal cocklers has led local fishermen to criticise the NWIFCA’s ‘softly, softly’ approach.

Flookburgh fisherman Frank Benson said the authority did not provide enough of a deterrent to people without a licence.

Colleague John Wilson said the NWIFCA had failed to take appropriate action when gangs of cockle pickers were ‘plundering’ Morecambe Bay in the early 2000s – and he was concerned that new licensing rules would not be enforced if cockle fishing returned.

But Dr Atkins stressed that the organisation was ‘not going soft’ on illegal fishermen – and that offenders would be prosecuted.

He added that first-time offenders were usually given a warning because they might not be aware of the rules, but prosecutions would follow for repeat offenders.

Paul Calland, deputy station officer at Bay Search and Rescue, said that illegal cocklers were at risk of getting caught out by the bay’s notorious rising tides and shifting sands.

“If people are cockling illegally then they obviously won’t be telling anybody where they are,” said Mr Calland.

“If they get stuck, how are we supposed to find them?”

Overfishing by commercial gangs and major erosion in the Bay have seen the cockle beds in Morecambe Bay closed for three years to allow stocks to recover.

Dave Dobson, enforcement director at NWIFCA, said it was ‘absolutely impossible’ to put a date on when the beds would re-open because of the unpredictability of how well they would reproduce.