Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 5:33 pm on 4 October 2022.
Thanks, Jenny. I don't know the answer to the swift boxes, but I will ask now that you've asked a question. We did that, I can't quite remember, at least one season ago, so we should have some information about the effect. I will certainly ask.
On the end-of-life fishing gear—you went to visit it as well, didn't you, in Swansea, Mike—we've done some trials, and I was really interested in the one in Swansea. Mike and I share a river between our constituencies; I can't remember whether it was on your side or mine, but anyway. [Interruption.] Yes, it's one of those arguments, isn't it? It was a really interesting project, and it was about not only could we recover this stuff from the sea but how we could recycle it and how we could basically make the fisherfolk some money out of it as well so that it was in their interest to not just let it drift into the sea. We've all seen those terrible pictures of turtles with stuff around them and all the rest of it. I'm really interested in rolling that out. We've got some data from that about how best to do it. That's what we're looking at, and that was very much supported by the deep-dive.
I'm the species champion for the native oyster, as it happens, so I'm very keen on bottom-growing organisms. Oysters are the canary in the mine actually; they will not grow if the ecosystem isn't good. I'm delighted to say that Swansea bay has been reseeded, having been a protected area for some time. When I was a kid, if you fell in Swansea bay, you had to have your stomach pumped out—I've just shown my age—and now it's a blue flag beach. The EU regulations drove that—I think we're losing sight of that. We were the dirty man of Europe, and it has happened in my lifetime. And I'm not that old. That is a delight, to see those beds reseeded and grow, and we hope in five years that they'll be cropable. The oyster was a staple of working-class diets right around the coast of Wales for many, many years. It's only recently been a rich person's delight. So, I'm really keen on doing that.
On marine, Lesley and I share this responsibility. Just to be clear, she's the decision maker for some of this stuff, and we share it. We are having a look at the whole thing about dredging, fishing, how that's done. I'm very keen, exactly as we say about the farmers, to bring our fisherpeople with us. I don't want them driven out of business and I don't want them not to be able to make a living, but nor do I want them to destroy the biodiversity of the sea. And they don't want to either, because they completely understand that they need to have a sustainable methodology for doing this. So, we have a working group, we've just refreshed it, we've just reappointed people and appointed new people to it, Jenny. And one of the things they'll be working on is this whole business about sustainable fishing, a sustainable fishing industry, what does that look like for Wales, and how on earth would we enforce it if we were doing it. Rhun's not in the Chamber, but you heard him going on, I think it was last week some time, about the vessel out of Bangor. We do have some vessels of that sort around the coast of Wales, so we are looking to see what we can do to use those vessels in the right way.