First Round of EU Norway Talks

A second and hopefully final round will be held in Bergen later this month. An NFFO delegation, as usual, attends both rounds of the negotiations. North Sea Joint Stocks

The Agreement’s ever increasing reliance on long term management plans means that there are now fewer surprises when it comes to setting TACs for jointly managed stocks in the North Sea. Whilst in these kind of negotiations, nothing is agreed until everything is agreed, and formal ratification will be required by the EU Council of Ministers meeting in December, unless there is some kind of upset, it is likely that the outcomes for next year’s joint stock whitefish quotas will be:

North Sea Cod – 1%

North Sea Haddock +15%

Whiting +15%

Saithe -15%

Plaice + 15%

Pelagics

The difficult situation facing the western mackerel stock in the absence of an agreement with Iceland and Faeroes, who are both behaving irresponsibly by autonomously setting very large TACs for themselves, casts a dark shadow over the pelagic industry. A meeting in Ireland later in the year will again try to restore some semblance of order in this fishery, once a model for stability, profitability and good management.

The news on North Sea herring is good, with discussions centring on how soon to harvest the stock at the full maximum sustainable yield level, given that the stock already has the biomass to support this, but the existing management plan is more conservative. Norway appears to be pressing for a settlement towards the higher end. Catch Quotas and Discard Reduction

Decisions will be required within the EU Norway Agreement on the future of the Catch Quota projects in EU member states. These require additional quota (moving quota from the discards column to the landed column) as an incentive for fisheries fully documented by CCTV cameras and with no cod discards. The evidence so far is that the vessels involved in the projects have successfully and substantially reduced their discards, and overall cod catch with an overall benefit to the stocks. This approach, despite its success will not be appropriate for all fisheries and it is important not to lose sight of other successful cod avoidance and discard initiatives. But hopefully Norway will cooperate further in progressively extending the Catch Quota scheme in a careful and measured way.

Balance

The EU Norway Agreement depends on a reciprocal balance of quotas and access to each others’ waters, although the management regimes in each are often quite different. In recent years maintaining the balance at a high level has been difficult for a variety of reasons and both the EU and Norway have committed themselves this year to working to ensure that the final balance is at the highest possible level. Norway was urged to be more flexible in its “shopping list”, in other words the stocks it will accept as currency for transfers of Norwegian quota to the EU.

Conclusion

The first round of the EU Norway Negotiations was remarkable for the positive spirit in which it was conducted. Much of the acrimony seen in recent years was absent and this allowed a more businesslike approach to prevail. There are still pressure points and differences of approach, emphasis and interest. But it was possible to see underneath those inevitable elements in any negotiations that these are sovereign countries engaged, as partners, in managing joint stocks in sometimes difficult circumstances of a biological, scientific, economic and political nature.

These will be for the East Coast Inshore and the East Coast Offshore. Marine Plans will then be extended to all UK waters in due course.

From the NFFO’s point of view there are two key aspects to marine spatial planning. The first is the quantity and quality of the information on which the plans are based, and the second is the governance arrangements that ensure that any aspects of the plans that affect fishing are fully discussed before being implemented. By virtue of its dispersed and varied patterns of activity, and absence of territorial property rights, fishing is always likely to be vulnerable to displacement by more geographically concentrated, politically prioritised, or high value offshore activities. For this reason the role of fish in the nation’s food security was one of the first items raised with the MMO. Damaging fishing and fish resources could have serious implications for long term sustainability given that the latter is a renewable resource if managed carefully.

Data and Dialogue

Sound, accurate data at the appropriate spatial scale is the bedrock of marine planning. Without information, it will not be able to achieve a more coherent approach to coordinating the explosion of offshore activities of which we are experiencing the early phases. Without accurate data, marine plans could potentially make things worse. However, at the same time, data on fishing activity is often commercially sensitive and valuable information which it is not appropriate to put into the public domain.

For this reason a very careful balance must be struck between providing fishing industry information to defend our most important fishing grounds, whilst ensuring that this data is only used for the purposes it was released for.

We were pleased that the MMO shared these concerns and were willing to discuss arrangements that would provide the right degree of protection for fishermen’s information, whether gathered through VMS satellite monitoring, electronic logbooks or more traditional means. There is a legal dimension to this in the form of the provisions of the Data Protection Act.

We stressed that raw data is only the beginning and a critical component in marine planning is the interpretation of the data to make sense of what is really happening in terms of fishing patterns. Although some offshore developers try to take short cuts by hiring self-appointed “experts”, in reality the only way to this effectively is to open a dialogue with the people involved – the fishers in the specific fisheries concerned. The MMO appeared to understand and appreciate this.

A statutory obligation on all offshore developers to consult the fishing industry is the minimum condition that would ensure that this dialogue takes place.

Early Days

We are in the early stages of marine planning and it is not yet clear what it will look like when fully developed. The degree to which marine plans will provide guidance on the location of offshore activities, or the degree to which it will be used as part of more formal rules on what can be done where remains to be determined.

It is obvious however that marine planning has the potential to affect the fishing industry in very significant ways, for the good if done well and for the bad if done badly. This is why even in these early days the Federation is devoting so much of its time and resources into getting it right. One of our many concerns is that the establishment of a network of marine protected areas and the expansion of offshore wind-farms and other forms of renewable energy is taking place in the absence of a proper marine spatial planning framework.

Coalition Chairman, Dr. Stephen Lockwood, said: “We have supported the establishment of a network of marine protected areas but it has to be done properly. The unrealistic timetable that the Government set for itself ran the danger that the MPAs would be set up on the basis of inadequate evidence. This could have had consequences for their effectiveness and for how defensible they would be, especially in a European context. There is absolutely no point setting up a series of “paper parks” that serve no purpose but to tick some box.”

“It is absolutely right that the Government takes some more time to gather the necessary evidence to ensure that the whole process is soundly based.”

“It is also important to remember that outside the 6 mile limit MCZs will be meaningless if they don’t apply to all fleets, UK and non-UK fishing there. This means that they will require support from other member states and that will not be forthcoming unless there is sound evidence that they MCZs are protecting what they say they are protecting.”

“We also welcome the Minister’s phased approach to designation. A big bang approach might be attractive from a PR perspective but increases the risk of getting it wrong. This should be about soundly based decisions and a phased approach is consistent with that.”

“The MPA Coalition will continue to engage with the Government’s statutory advisors on conservation, Defra, and the devolved administrations to ensure that the fishing industry in all its diversity is fully taken into account in the process of setting up MCZs. A less frenetic timetable will allow sensible approaches to complex issues such as the displacement of fishing vessels from their customary fishing grounds to emerge.”

The EU Cod Management Plan has been evaluated by the Commission’s Scientific, Technical, and Economic Committee for Fisheries and found to be flawed in fundamental ways, including the weakness of the link between reducing fishing effort and a consequent reduction in fishing mortality. In the past this would have meant that a new plan, which addressed these shortcomings, would have been put to the Council of Ministers for approval. However, the arrival of the Lisbon Treaty, which introduces co-decision-making with the European Parliament, raises the prospect of a delay until 2014 before the Plan can be revised. The Plan’s pre-programmed annual reductions of up to 25% in fishing effort and TACs means that parts of the fleet subject to the Cod Plan will be extinguished economically long before then.

It is imperative therefore for the Council of Ministers to intervene at the December Council to pause this part of the Plan, pending a more profound revision of the cod recovery arrangements in the North Sea, Irish Sea, West of Scotland and Eastern Channel. The NFFO, along with other stakeholders from the regional advisory councils, will be participating in a meeting later this month with STECF to discuss the contents of a revised Cod Plan.

All, parts of the NFFO back the priority given to halting the effort cuts, even those fleets and areas not directly affected. It does not need much imagination to appreciate the displacement effects of a run-away Cod Plan, with vessels forced to work outside the Cod Recovery Zone or to shift into fleet sectors that are least affected by the provisions of the Plan. One of STECF’s conclusions so far has been that the Cod Plan, because it is so blunt and poorly thought-through, has generated perverse consequences for cod recovery, such as forcing vessels to shift into small-mesh fisheries and into targeting shoaling species, including cod, because they take less time at sea to catch.

Setting annual TAC and effort limits are explicitly excluded from co-decision-making with the European Parliament and so it is clear that the Council has the legal right to depart from the pre-programmed reductions in the Cod Plan, notwithstanding the Lisbon Treaty. What is required is the political will to amend the Plan to take account of STECF’s conclusions and the unanimous advice of the North Sea and North Western Waters regional advisory councils. Although the UK is in the vanguard of those affected by the effort cuts, other member states realize that the implications for their fleets will very shortly become severe. France, Netherlands, Ireland and Denmark were assisted by the lottery of the timing of their decommissioning schemes when the effort baselines were set but that relative advantage is being rapidly eroded by the scale of the cuts requires under the plan.

Rejecting the EU Cod Management Plan and pre-programmed effort cuts does not mean rejecting efforts to rebuild the cod stocks in Community waters. It may not be a coincidence that the only area exempted from the Cod Recovery Zone, despite repeated efforts by the Commission to have it included, is the Celtic Sea where ICES have advised that a rapid rebuilding of the cod stock is underway. The RACs and STECF have both concluded that the parts of the EU Cod Plan that show most promise are those which encourage active cod avoidance, whilst restrictions on time at sea can have the opposite effect. Real Time Closures for instance become less effective if vessels do not have the time to search for low cod intensity areas. Building on the parts of the Cod Plan that have shown promise; tailoring the Plan to regional characteristics; addressing the discards issue; moving to fully documented fisheries where this is appropriate and feasible are all ways in which the plan could be improved.

The immediate priority however must be to address the pre-programmed reductions. The Council has the authority and must use it. To fail would register as one of the most catastrophic failures of the CFP to date, and would put a spotlight on the potential for policy paralysis that exists with co-decision unless more flexible and pragmatic ways of decision-making are reached.

At its recent meeting in Dublin, the RAC paid tribute to Sam’s leadership over the first six years of its existence. The General Assembly applauded Sam’ s central role in building the RAC out of a disparate group of sometimes mutually suspicious stakeholders, into the formidable body that it has become, producing considered advice for the Commission, member states and the European Parliament.

“I have been fortunate to be part of this RAC as it has matured into a serious body whose opinions carry significant weight in the corridors of power”, Sam said, after handing the Chair over to the SFF’s Bertie Armstrong.

“Apart from the growth of mutual respect between the fishing interests of the various member states and other stakeholders, it is the strengthening engagement between the RAC and ICES scientists at all levels that has been the RAC’s obvious achievement. Tackling the problem of data-deficiencies that often degrade the quality of stock assessments is now one of the NWWRAC’s principal areas of attention.”

“The vast sea area covered by the NWWRAC (West of Scotland, West of Ireland, Irish Sea, Celtic Sea and the Channel) has undoubtedly posed a challenge but we have found a way to operate and produce advice through a mixture of area and issue focused groups.”

Sam was an obvious candidate for the RAC chair, having performed a similar role in a number of trans-national meetings between French, Spanish, Irish and UK fishing industry representatives in the years leading up to the formation of RACs. But he also sounded a note of caution about the future:

“RACs have exceeded expectations in the way that they have brought stakeholders together and produced high quality evidence-based advice. But it is indisputable that the current over-centralised system of decision-making within the CFP is incapable of making best use of that advice. There is a bottleneck at the centre which will not be removed until there is a transfer of real responsibility to the regional level, whatever legal form that might take.”

“It has also been disappointing that we as a RAC have not been able to devote more time to developing advice on long term multi-annual management plans because we have been forced into fire-fighting on poorly considered proposals such as the 25% TAC reductions for data poor stocks. We only have so much time and if that is spent dealing with immediate threats it cannot be used to work on long term plans that I believe are the future.”

“On the positive side, RACs have laid the foundations for a decentralised CFP in the future. They have shown that regional cooperation on the management of shared stocks can work; that constructive engagement with fisheries science is possible without undermining its impartiality, and above all that it is possible to bring stakeholders’ genuine insights, knowledge and experience to the decision making process. All this is vital as we hopefully move from blanket measures to tailored regional management.”

Sam paid tribute to the efficient and friendly staff of the NWWRAC secretariat, based in Ireland’s BIM, and to the members of the RAC itself who had worked together to make the RAC the force that it has become.

Apart from his work as Chairman of the Cornish Fish Producers Organisation and as a member of the NFFO’s Executive Committee, Sam will now mainly be found fishing for Cornish Sardines – that’s pilchards to you and me.

John has been highly active on behalf of the Committee as its Vice Chairman and most recently chaired the South West Fishing Industry MCZ Planning Group which put forward industry positions to the Finding Sanctuary project. He is joined by Steve Parker who was elected as Vice Chairman at the meeting.

John Butterwith said: “These are very challenging times for our industry which is being buffeted on multiple fronts and it is essential that the Committee acts as a mouth piece for the industry in the South West to ensure that our issues and needs are addressed at the top table. The strength of the Committee is its diverse mix of interests covering the multiple fisheries of the South West which means we can speak with gravity and conviction.”

Marine Conservation Zones

The Committee had Natural England in attendance to discuss the status of marine conservation zone planning following the completion of the Finding Sanctuary Project. It was agreed that there was a need to maintain a two-way dialogue with the industry in the lead up to the selection of sites to go to the public consultation expected next summer. The industry needed to have its own dossier backed with as much evidence as possible to ensure that its viewpoints achieved maximum influence. The on-going frustration of working blind with respect to the management measures that would apply in protected areas was strongly impressed.

TACs and Quotas

The Committee looked at the 2012 TACs and Quotas proposals which are being influenced this year by the Commission’s policy to transition fisheries to Maximum Sustainable Yield by 2015 and apply automatic cuts to stocks that are considered to be data poor.

John Butterwith said: “It is deeply regretful that the Commission finds the need to propose even more disproportionate and arbitrary cuts to so called data poor stocks when the underlying stocks assessments are showing an improving situation. All this amounts to unnecessary over-kill and is only going to generate more discards and wasted resources, something which the Commission is supposedly seeking to eliminate.”

Domestic Quota Reform

Domestic quota reform and under 10s was discussed in light of Defra’s awaited consultation response.

“There is no getting away from the fact that the tight quota situation makes any reform of domestic quota arrangements difficult and testing but if we are to be able to think creatively and find solutions it is necessary that we as an industry can discuss the possibilities with the information from quota managers on the table to identify what we have to work with. We must also not neglect that the non-sector is as much a part of this process and will need full consideration in moving forward.”

Crab and Lobster

The Committee underpinned its support for the Federation’s Shellfish Committee’s work to progress an effort cap in the crab and lobster fisheries through a combination of measures to suit the varied nature of the fleet.

John Butterwith said: “We will increase the Committee’s meetings to quarterly in order to keep abreast of the fast moving agenda and input the hands on experience at the port level into directing the Committee’s policy work”.

At the recent meeting in Brussels, representatives from the North Sea and North West Waters RACs, including the NFFO, highlighted the need to make urgent changes to the plan as its provisions continue to tie the fleets into large, preordained, annual reductions of effort and TACs. STECF’s report published in July, questions the validity of this approach on the basis of the evidence so far.

The key elements of the STECF Report are:

North Sea

• That fishing mortality declined significantly before the Cod Management Plan but has seen only minor reductions in the two years since the plan was introduced
• Spawning Stock Biomass has continued to increase gradually but is still below Blim.
• The cod stock has more than doubled in the last 6 years

West of Scotland

• There are only indicative trends in mortality but it is believed to be stable. Fishing mortality is certainly not declining.
• The spawning stock has increased but is well below Blim

Irish Sea

• ICES only has indicative trends (weak assessment)
• Fishing mortality uncertain but believed to be very high (around F1.5 equivalent to the level that crashed North Sea herring in the 1970s)
• No indications of any recovery in Spawning Stock Biomass

Overall Indications in the STECF Report

Although it is too early to say how the Plan will develop in the future, it is possible to say:

• The Plan is not delivering a reduction in fishing mortality as required
• Significant parts of the Plan does not have stakeholders’ support
• The Plan is more likely to succeed if it has stakeholder support; if stakeholders support the plan they are more likely to take their responsibilities to cod recovery more seriously
• The Plan has delivered improvements in selectivity through Articles 11 and 13
• Actions taken under these articles have also been responsible for a significant reduction in discards
• Some technical measures have reduced cod by-catch (grids in the nephrops fishery for example)
• Reported landings are in line with TAC limits; but catches are well in excess of TACs as a result of quota-driven discards
• Cod avoidance has been insufficient
• Unintentional targeting of cod is a reality (possibly as a result of gear in use)
• Fishing mortality on other species such as haddock, whiting and saithe are consistent with CFP objectives
• In the West of Scotland seal predation has resulted in an increase in natural mortality
• The effort regime, contrary to expectations, has been difficult to administer and implement
• Article 13 which provides effort exemptions in return for positive fishing behaviours have proven their worth:
• Tailored responses and industry support
• Redistribution of effort away from cod-rich areas
• Reduction in discards
• Encouragement of more selective gear
• Encouraged temporal/spatial avoidance
• However verification of Article 13 exemptions is complex
• Fleet capacity has reduced but mainly before the beginning of the Plan
• This type of meta analysis is not very helpful as it masks changes that take place at the business level
• Some articles in the Plan are difficult to apply, some are ambiguous
• Reliance on a combination of TAC (enforced as landing limits) and effort reductions is a core weakness in the Plan1
• There has been inadequacy in the control systems in controlling total cod removals (discards)
• Fishing mortality cannot be expected always to follow proportionately trends in fishing effort
• There are problems in providing catch advice (Harvest Control Rules rely on mortality estimates which are inaccurate or imprecise)
• There is a lack of an analytical assessment in the West of Scotland and Irish Sea cod fisheries
• There are benefits in using alternative methods for setting TACs based on catches rather than landings
• Catch advice is given without consideration of interaction with other species

Regional Advisory Councils

The North Sea and North West regional councils made presentations to the meeting that stressed:

• The openness in the STECF review process that allowed the RACs to participate fully, although responsibility for writing the report lies with STECF alone
• That the Report endorsed many of the points about the weaknesses in the Cod Management Plan that had been highlighted in RAC advice, most significantly that:
• That fishing mortality cannot be expected to follow reductions in fishing effort (examples of the perverse outcomes generated by effort constraints were provided)
• That striving to reduce fishing mortality through restrictive TACs alone has, and would continue to, generate high levels of discards unless a different approach was taken
• That aligning economic incentives with management objectives is essential and that failure to do so had led to perverse outcomes
• That various kinds of incentivised cod avoidance offers a surer way to rebuild the cod stocks
• That a management plan which fails to take into account the mixed fishery and multi-species interactions is not likely to succeed
• That a regionally focused plan that allows scope to deal with the specifics of different fleet and stock characteristics and dynamics is more likely to succeed

What now?

The Commission made clear that, notwithstanding an ongoing dispute between the Commission and the Council with the European Parliament over who has competence for approving management plans, revision or renewal of the Cod Management Plan would be through co-decision making. This would be an extended process, tied inevitably into CFP reform, with the earliest prospect for a revised plan being 2014. Given current relations between the parties there is no guarantee that it would not take longer.

Before the Lisbon Treaty, it would have been expected that the current Plan would have had a three year lifespan. Now it looks like we are tied into a plan that neither rebuilds the cod stock in the way hoped for but has crippling consequences for the fleets.

The RACs forcefully made the point that the STECF evaluation had highlighted fundamental flaws in the management Plan, and that the pre-programmed annual effort and TAC reductions required under the Plan would extinguish economic viability in those parts of the fishing industry subject to the plan, unless urgent remedial steps are taken.

This is the impasse that has been reached. It is recognised that the Plan is flawed but the political process for revising it is apparently too cumbersome to break out of its economically damaging but from a stocks point of view, counterproductive, provisions. The possibilities now seem to be:

• That the Commission authorises a new and more flexible approach to providing effort exemptions using Article 13, as recommended by STECF. This could, if used boldly, release significant parts of the fleet from effort control whilst encouraging cod avoidance and discard reduction
• Following internal considerations, the Commission and the European Parliament find some way to fast-track changes to the Plan to accommodate STECFs conclusions, pending a much more thorough review and revision of the Plan in the context of CFP reform.

As the fishing industry braces itself for a further round of effort and TAC reductions required under the plan for 2012, the stakes could not be higher.

A Multi-Species Plan

There is broad agreement that the current Cod Plan should be replaced by a broader multi-species fisheries plan. What this could include in concrete terms will be the subject of discussions in STECF in November and December. Although the industry’s focus is naturally on the immediate future, it is important for the RACs to remain engaged in this process as it will undoubtedly have a major influence on the future direction of fisheries management in the Context of CFP reform.

The meeting comes after a period of intense work focussed on limiting the harm to the industry coming from the Marine Conservation Zone planning process. The Committee formed the core of the South West Fishing Industry Marine Conservation Zone (MCZ) Planning Group which met frequently during the Finding Sanctuary Project in order to inform industry representatives involved in the project with the local knowledge and views to influence the site selection process.

The Committee will return to its usual business covering the multitude of policy issues affecting the fleet in the region, both at a local level such as wind farms to national and European policy including domestic quota and CFP reform, annual TAC negotiations and national crab and lobster policy.

It is also continuing to address Marine Protected Areas highlighting MCZ sites that remain contentious and pressing that an appropriate evidence base must be in place to justify site selection and conservation objectives whilst also opposing the selection of reference areas that would ban all forms of fishing but have no legislative basis or coherent scientific framework. The Committee was successful in resisting the Finding Sanctuary project from producing recommendations for automatic blanket bans on trawling in inshore proposed MCZ sites, something which conservation lobby sympathisers sought to achieve in the absence of any evidence based approach.

At the heart of the Committee are its highly active and influential local association leaders who regularly take up the issues of the region as members of the NFFO’s Executive Committee and the Shellfish Committee, providing the Federation with a strong platform upon which to engage government, nationally and on the European stage.

The meeting will be open to NFFO members and non-members alike and will meet at the Great Western Hotel, Exeter from 11am on 19th October. Those intending to attend should advise Joanna Lenehan Joanna@nffo.org.uk ; Tel 01904 635430

Landings of crab and lobster fisheries are worth around £ 40 million annually to the UK, yet shellfish policy has languished, with no discernable direction, as high level policy options have been discussed and re-discussed. The Federation’s policy attempts to break this logjam by proposing a number of incremental steps that if adopted, we believe would lead towards a more economically resilient shellfish fleet and a sustainable future.

NFFO Shellfish Policy

The NFFO’s Shellfish Committee met in Derby, on 16th September 2011, to discuss and agree a way forward on NFFO. Our aim is a national shellfish policy that would deliver a sustainable and profitable future for the crab and lobster fisheries. In its work the Committee drew on a discussion paper developed on the basis of earlier discussions. (Annex 1).

The meeting, and earlier discussions on shellfish policy, took place against an evident lack of momentum on Defra and UK shellfish policy. Despite a broad willingness within the shellfish sector to use the currently reasonably positive conservation status of most crab and lobster stocks to move towards economically and biologically sustainable fisheries, little concrete progress has been made in recent years.

The Committee observed that a number of broad brush proposals, such as a national pot limitation scheme or, more recently, a system of rights based management for shellfish, have faced difficulties in moving beyond the concept stage, not least because of the diversity of the fisheries to which they would apply. In turn, awaiting progress through these high level initiatives has hampered movement on other more prosaic steps, such as an incremental step-wise increase in the minimum landing size for crab and lobster.

The Shellfish Committee also observed that:

• Improving the resilience of the crab and lobster fisheries crucially depends on dealing with the issue of latent capacity

• Improving the exploitation pattern in the pot fisheries through minimum landing sizes and other technical measures offers a proven means of improving the conservation status of the crab and lobster stocks.

• The crab and lobster fisheries have a built-in advantage over many other fisheries in the high (almost 100%) survival rate of animals returned to the sea.

• The attempt to solve all of the shellfish sector’s problems at once has led to a period of policy paralysis.

• The diversity of the shellfish sector is part of its strength but does pose undoubted challenges for the implementation of undifferentiated conservation initiatives.

Against this background the Shellfish Committee recommended a three stranded, staged approach:

Latent Capacity

As the number of pots in the shellfisheries has increased and the average yield per pot has decreased. This decreasing catch per unit effort is indicative of a fishery that has passed the level of optimum yield, unless significant virgin stocks are found. The fear that has driven both fisheries scientists and some in the shellfish sector, to argue for new constraints, is that the large reservoir of dormant, or under-utilised licences with shellfish endorsements, could represent the potential for a substantial increase of fishing effort. This potential, if deployed could undermine and jeopardise the economic and biological sustainability of the crab and lobster fisheries. An increase in effort could be driven by periods during which the shellfisheries are profitable, drawing in new entrants, or increased activity by existing participants, or by effort displaced by constraints in the whitefish sector.

There is a strong case therefore for finding a way to cap fishing capacity in the shellfisheries at its current level. It isthe potential for expansion in the effort deployed in the shellfisheries that has underpinned arguments both for a national shellfish pot limitation scheme and the case for allocating transferable fishing rights to the shellfish sector. Neither of those initiatives has remotely approached take-off speed.

High Volume Fleet

In fact the principal concern in relation to an expansion of effort relates to the high-volume, high capacity (mainly vivier) sector of the fleet which catches the overwhelming majority of the crab catch. The addition of even one additional vessel capable of deploying the amount of gear this class of vessel is capable of carrying, would have adverse consequences for both economic stability of the sector and the conservation of the brown crab stocks.

We therefore recommend that, as a matter of urgency, administrative means are used to preclude the addition of more capacity to the high-volume sector of the shellfish fleet. This could be achieved by limiting the aggregation of licences over 10m vessels holding shellfish licences, or through a specific licence endorsement. We would be pleased to enter into discussions on the best means to achieve the desired outcome but the objective should be to ensure no additions to the high-catching part of the fleet. By comparison with a national pot limitation scheme, or the introduction of a system of rights-based-management linked to national output controls, this step would be administratively straightforward, could be introduced quickly, and would have the broad support of the industry.

Inshore Fleet

Capping fishing effort in the rest of the fleet is not as straightforward as dealing with the high volume fleet. While there is clearly a significant reservoir of dormant and underutilised licences, which if attached to active vessels could lead to a substantial increase in deployed gear, there is also a need the need to retain flexibility within the inshore sector to change target species. The resilience of the inshore sector has historically depended to a high degree on the ability to respond to changes in the local abundance of target species and market demand. The need to cap fishing effort, whilst retaining this flexibility suggests that a carefully balanced approach is required.

Against this background, the Committee recommends a policy for this part of the shellfish fleet focused on the removal of latent capacity following a thorough analysis of data on dormant and under-utilised shellfish licences and a careful examination of the policy options. The aim would be to progressively remove scope for significant additions of effort to the active shellfish fleet, whilst retaining significant flexibility for the inshore fleet to change target species. We believe that this would best be achieved through a Licence Review Group on which the fishing industry plays a central part. Progress would be made through agreed incremental adjustments to the licensing regime that would over time introduce a cap in capacity, in a way that the “big bang” approaches have not. Moving beyond stalled policies requires a careful, non-dramatic, steady approach based on the principles of good governance.

Technical Measures

It has been clear for some time that the log-jam in dealing with the issue of latent capacity has held up progress on other fronts in shellfish conservation and management; the argument being that there is little point improving the exploitation pattern in the shellfisheries if the net result is to increase the profitability of the fishery – thereby attracting in additional effort. Breaking free from the inertia of the recent past in the way suggested above would, we believe, release the breaks in improving the exploitation pattern in the shellfisheries.

Given the diversity of the shellfisheries around our coast, so far as the inshore fleet is concerned, there is little option but to pursue a strongly regional approach, with the IFCAS taking a leading role for fisheries within the six mile limit. It is however, possible to describe a menu or toolbox of possible measures from which the regional authorities may construct a mix of measures tailored to local requirements. This could include:

• Minimum landing sizes
• Maximum landing sizes
• Prohibition on the landing of berried lobsters
• Escape hatches and other gear
• Closed areas/seasons
• V-notching
• Local pot limitation schemes

Notwithstanding our support for a strongly regional dimension to shellfish conservation, the Federation advocates and supports incremental, staged, increases in the minimum landing sizes for crab and lobster on the following lines:

Brown crab

• Landing size increased by 10mm across all areas over, subject to an impact assessment to identify fisheries in which a different approach may be required. (for example where the ecological/habitat conditions constrain the development and size locally)

Lobster

• A stepped annual increase in MLS up to 90mm

Nomadic Fleet

The high-volume nomadic fleet operates mainly in waters outside the 6 mile limit and indeed often in waters outside UK jurisdiction. This raises a number of particular challenges in terms of achieving a coordinated and coherent approach to technical conservation measures. However, the outcomes from number of transnational meetings involving high-volume catchers from the Republic of Ireland, Scotland, England and France have demonstrated that coordinated voluntary measures are feasible. We consider that there is considerable scope for coordinated for self-management in this sector if the right conditions are created. These are principally dialogue and trust and a supportive regulatory framework.

Science

Fisheries scientists would agree that despite some recent progress, scientific assessments on crab and lobster stocks remain rudimentary and cannot as yet be relied on to provide a reliable or robust picture of the conservation status of these stocks. It is difficult given the current level of financial resources how this situation will change in the near future unless there is a much higher level of collaboration between fisheries scientists and the operators of vessels in the shellfish fleet. We would strongly support the development of a strong fisheries science partnership in these fisheries, either inside or outside the formal FSP framework.

Rights Based Management

As with most measures, there is a range of views within the shellfish sector about the extension of rights based management to the shellfisheries. At present it is probably true to say that there are too many unanswered questions about how such a system would operate in practice for any definitive conclusion to be reached. In these circumstances it is unsurprising that the dominant view within the shellfish sector is to decline to move in this direction and to focus on what can be achieved reasonably quickly, as described above.

Whelks

The whelk fisheries can be vulnerable to overexploitation and boom-and-bust fishing activity, as well as effort displaced from other fisheries. It is important therefore that the conservation status of the whelk fisheries is fully taken into account in the design and application of the shellfish policy.

Conclusion

Progress in the development and application of a shellfish policy has been painfully slow. There is a danger that an opportunity provided by the current generally positive stock conditions to adopt and implement measures that would ensure the continued sustainability and profitability of this sector is lost. Dealing with the issue of dormant and underutilized licenses is central to an effective shellfish policy. Broad brush, top-down policies such as a national pot limitation scheme or the extension of fixed quota allocations to the pot fisheries have not attracted the minimum support necessary to move forward, not least because regulators have not been able to explain convincingly how they would operate effectively in practice. We therefore advocate a stepwise approach beginning with the most immediate problem: capping capacity in the high volume part of the shellfish fleet. Having accomplished an effective constraint on this part of the fleet, we should turn to the issue of latent capacity in the rest of the industry. Here, striking the right balance between dealing with the potential for an increase in effort with retaining inshore vessels’ flexibility to change target species is best dealt with through a licence review group’ on which the industry has a central place. In the meantime, progress in improving the exploitation pattern through regionally sensitive measures should be reinstated.

We think that this approach has relevance on an all UK basis but recognize the realities of devolved government. Devolved administrations and the shellfish sectors in other parts of the UK will have to make their own judgment as to its worth.

Finally, we do not think that this paper is the last word in shellfish policy. It is a pragmatic and reasoned response to the diversity of the shellfish sector that does not seek to solve all problems in a single sweep. The attempt to find an all-embracing approach lies behind the inertia in shellfish policy in recent years. More work is required but adopting the approach suggested in this paper would be an important step forward.

That is the message sent out from the NFFO’s South East Committee when it met recently in Shoreham. There was recognition that a handful of local representatives had worked tirelessly to ensure that our voice was heard in the Balanced Seas regional project but it was agreed that there was still much to do to defend access to critical fishing areas.

Before the recommended marine conservation zones are confirmed by ministers and management measures applied within them, it is vital that fisheries managers sit down with the vessel operators potentially affected. The experience of Lyme Bay has become a byword of how not to introduce marine protected areas in a heavy handed, top-down, rushed and brutal way on the basis of patchy evidence. If the mistakes of the Lyme Bay are to be avoided there must be detailed discussions on a site-by-site basis to find the right balance between protecting the vulnerable feature – and allowing fishing to continue within the area. Often some kind of zoning provides the solution.

The Committee believes that this requires the industry as a whole, to identify the main fisheries in each candidate MPA and to select individuals from each of the main gear groups who can engage with the decision-makers. Often this is reasonably straightforward as it is clear who is likely to be the spokesman for a gear type in a given fishery – they just need a little persuasion! The key is that whoever is selected, they must have the support and backing of the industry as their legitimate spokesperson.

The NFFO in discussions with Defra, the MMO, and Natural England have been led to believe that the management authorities are keen to develop this approach so there is a heavy responsibility on the industry to organise itself.

Cat amongst the Pigeons

One possible obstacle to the consensual and thorough approach to management measures within marine protected areas, advocated by the NFFO and the MPA Fishing Coalition, lies in the emergence of an adversarial legal strand within some of the more aggressive environmental NGOs. The recent letter from Client Earth/ Marine Conservation Society to the MMO, threatening legal action unless all fishing is banned from European SACs in UK waters, pending prolonged and costly impact assessments, opens the real threat of displacement from fishing grounds at an early stage and on a huge scale. This has been one of the MPA Fishing Coalition’s main fears from the outset, as large scale displacement will have serious ecological, as well as economic and social consequences – if a legal challenge is successful. We are confident that the MMO has more than sufficient arguments to counter such a blunt and aggressive approach but experience tells us that the law works in mysterious ways and this import from the USA is very unwelcome. There can be no guarantee that a court (at least in the first stages of an action) would not be persuaded to support such a step. Although the threat of legal action is initially focused on the introduction of European Natura sites, this litigious approach could equally be applied to domestic marine conservation zones under the provisions of the Marine and Coastal Access Act. The South East Committee took full account of this unwelcome development.

New Chairman and Areas of Work

The well attended and lively meeting in Shoreham unanimously elected Tony Delahunty, fisherman from Selsey, as Chairman of the NFFO’s South East Committee. The meeting discussed a range of issues in addition to marine protected areas. There was broad support for the NFFO’s evolving shellfish policy, and our work in the Industry Working Group with NUTFA and UKAFPO on a resolution to the quota problems facing the under-10 metre fleet. The meeting stressed that the interdependence of all vessels, irrespective of size in maintaining port and marketing infrastructures.

Concern about the Commission’s blunt approach to the conservation of skates and rays was voiced. The Federation was able to tell the meeting of a North West Waters initiative to develop a more tailored approach that once fully developed, would allow harvesting of those species of rays for which there are no conservation concerns, whilst providing adequate protection for those that are under pressure.

Communications

More than a few fishermen expressed surprise at the work that is going on within the Federation on their behalf. It was agreed that there is a two way communications problem and it was hoped that the new invigorated South East Committee would go some way to resolving this. The meeting considered that it was essential that the Federation is made aware of the views of fishermen in the South East and that the grass-roots are kept abreast of what the NFFO is doing on issues of concern to them. It was agreed that Tony Delahunty’s appointment as Chairman and his regular attendance at NFFO Executive Committee meetings would go a long way to establishing stronger communications.

Given the wide geographical extent of the South East it was agreed to hold further meetings in the east and north of the region to afford all fishermen the opportunity to participate. These will be organised as soon as practical.

The meeting also discussed:

• TACs and quotas for 2012
• CFP reform
• The MCA’s intention to apply mandatory wearing of Personal Flotation Devices from next year and the implications for vessel insurance
• IFCAs’ willingness to work with the industry on a sensible approach to MPAs
• The replacement to the European Fisheries Fund, the proposals for which are expected in November

Context

The idea of capping effort in the UK crab and lobster fisheries has been in circulation for many years without making any significant headway. The scientific argument for a cap is that whilst we don’t know with any degree of precision how close we are to the tipping point, the continuous expansion in fishing effort in the crab and lobster fisheries (measured in terms of the increasing number of pots in the water) could seriously jeopardise stocks if the current favourable environmental conditions are discontinued.

The case is also made that sensible conservation measures taken early are much less difficult for the industry to absorb than when stocks are in decline and the economic pressures greater.

These conservation arguments have been given additional impetus by periodic price collapses in the brown crab market caused by seasonal overproduction in relation to market demand.

For many years the favoured approach advanced by scientists and Defra was the application of a national pot limitation scheme. However, problems foreseen in implementing and enforcing such a national scheme, and strong resistance from some parts of the shellfish sector, have meant that such a national scheme has never reached take off speed; although local pot limitation schemes have been successfully applied in Jersey and Northumbria.

Within Defra policy thinking, pot limitation has now been overtaken by rights-based management as the favoured approach to capping fishing effort. Internationally, within the CFP and within Defra, the widespread view is that defining and allocating specific fishing rights to the industry carries a range of conservation and economic advantages. The case for extending a rights-based approach to the crab and lobster fisheries has been given additional impetus through ministers’ decision (subject to consultation) to address the issue of latent capacity in the under-10m fleet in England through the allocation of defined rights in the form of Fixed Quota Allocations. On the evidence of previous experience, vessels denied access to quota species will immediately, or over time, redirect effort towards non-quota stocks, of which shellfish are currently amongst the most valuable.

Rights Based Management

Pre-consultation discussions with Defra officials, including dialogue within the NFFO Shellfish Committee, suggest that the Defra approach being considered would:

• Define and allocate fishing rights to those identified as active within the crab and lobster fisheries using a recent reference period to determine eligibility
• Establish fishing rights that would define an entitlement to a % share of a national TAC
• Allocate rights based on a track record of participation in the crab and lobster fisheries during a reference period (probably 2007-10, or the highest 12 months within that period)
• Apply rights to sub-divisions of English territorial waters based on ICES assessment areas: e.g. Western Central North Sea, Southern North Sea, Eastern Channel, Western Channel and Approaches, Celtic Sea and Irish Sea.
• Encourage entitlement holders to form producer organisations, transfer, trade and swap shellfish FQAs
• Preclude fishing vessel licence holders without a track record from receiving FQAs; however they will still be permitted to buy or lease FQAs
• Possibly withhold a proportion of entitlements and held in reserve then used to encourage new entrants
• Apply catch limits (to all intents and purposes, a national TAC). As it is acknowledged that the stock assessments for crab and lobster are not robust, the national TAC would be set for 5 years (i.e. no annual changes within the 5 year period)
• Aspire towards an all-UK scheme but Defra acknowledges that the devolved administrations may wish to follow different policies and that the European CFP route is full of pitfalls

Any aspect of these ideas may change before formal consultation and certainly before decisions are made and implemented. But they do give an idea of Defras intended direction of travel, especially when seen against the background of domestic quota reform and CFP reform in which rights based management is a central theme.

Active Fleet

The operators in the active shellfish fleet are those most likely to support rights-based management, although not without reservations and concerns, nor with unanimity. On the whole, the active shellfish fleet is willing to initiate and implement a range of conservation measures. However, the argument is made with some validity, that the benefits of such short term sacrifices would be dissipated if vessels in other fisheries continue to be allowed to change their pattern of fishing to target shellfish to take advantage of improved stocks; this would increase effort in the shellfish sector and jeopardise progress made. The solution to this problem is to create a barrier against the transfer of fishing new effort into the shellfish sector; and most particularly, to block the many currently dormant or barely active licences being attached to highly active shellfish vessels. Ring fencing the shellfish fleet, from this perspective, is the first and necessary step towards an effective conservation regime, providing a degree of security and foundation for longer term planning.

Amongst the active shellfish fleet there is broad agreement on this first step. Thereafter there is a range of views on the most effective way forward:

• Those who would accept the benefits of a system of rights-based management, with quantitative limits on landings of crab and lobster in English waters
• Those who favour pot limitations as an alternative means of capping effort, especially those schemes that allow for flexibility at local level
• Those who favour measures targeted at the higher catching vivier sector only, for example a tie-up period
• Those in the vivier fleet who favour voluntary constraints which tie in other vessels of the same class from other parts of the UK and from Ireland, France and possibly other EU member states

Inshore Flexibility

Historically, one of the main sources of resilience in the fishing industry generally but especially in the inshore fleet, has been the ability to change target species and gears to adapt rapidly to new stocks and market conditions. Over the past fifteen or twenty years this flexibility has been eroded as licensing and quota restrictions have progressively pigeon- holed the fleet into administratively convenient categories. The extension of rights-based management into the shellfish sector is strongly opposed by those who see it as a step too far in stripping the inshore fleet from important flexibility. This, it is argued can have adverse consequences from a resource management perspective as well as the economics of running a small vessel economically. Pigeon-holing removes an important safety-valve when the abundance of a particular species falters. Vessels are constrained from moving into alternative fisheries where the stocks may be more robust. It also prevents adaption to meet changing market conditions and opportunities.

In a mirror image of the argument for ring-fencing, the case is made for what the French call a polyvalent of multivalent fleet, broadly defined and with maximum flexibility. Even without human influences stocks fluctuate over time and it is misconceived to subdivide the fleet into discrete impenetrable components that prevents adjustment to this biological as well as changing market realities.

NFFO Position

It is clear from the above that in developing a coherent and meaningful NFFO shellfish policy, we are confronted with two mutually incompatible viewpoints with narratives that draw on different aspects of the issue but which both have a strong internal logic. Both are supported to some degree or other by different parts of the NFFO’s membership.

The only corridor between the two positions in Defra’s approach to rights based management is the suggestion that although vessels without the requisite track record will receive no shellfish FQAs, they would be permitted to subsequently buy shellfish FQAs against which they could fish.

It is unlikely given the different objective interests and logics that the Federation could broker a consensus position between these two viewpoints, although the NFFO Shellfish Committee has provided a good forum where the issues have been discussed and analysed in a thorough, mature, and good humoured way.

Beyond the issue of ring-fencing vs. flexibility NFFO Shellfish Policy could usefully define the elements of a progressive approach to shellfish management that would be broadly acceptable to its membership.

Elements of a Shellfish Policy: for Discussion

A possible NFFO Shellfish Policy could take account of:

• The distinction between the inshore fleet in which catches are made by relatively small (generally under 12m) vessels and the offshore, nomadic offshore fleet whose catches of brown crab are of a magnitude higher; taking account those fisheries which have extended offshore (like Bridlington) but are still prosecuted by non-vivier vessels
• We could support a cap on the expansion of the high-catching sector of the fleet through a special shellfish licence that would restrict entry to this part of the shellfish fleet; the rest of the (inshore) shellfish fleet however would address stock conservation through regionalised and customised management measures and would not be subject to such a cap
• We could argue that Defra’s ideas for extending rights based management to the shellfish sector are unconvincing for the following reasons:
• Effective rights based-management requires secure and exclusive rights and that would not be the case as outside the six mile limit the resource shared with other member states; there is also a danger that the UK shellfish industry could disadvantage its future prospects by restricting itself at this juncture if landings are subsequently used to determine a relative stability share of the resource
• We do not consider that the stock assessments for shellfish are of a quality that would allow for a level of precision that could reliably produce regional TACs; although this might not be a problem in the first instance with a fixed “national TAC” set for five years, it would quickly become a problem if a more restrictive approach was envisaged
• We have to concede that if Defra go ahead with the extension of rights base management to the inshore fleet, and latent licences will receive nil FQAs without an additional constraint on licence transfers, there is a probability of further migration of effort into the shellfish sector; the question that we have to ask ourselves is: is this a price worth paying for retaining the traditional flexibility in the inshore sector?

They feel that the divisive issue of under-10m quota management has eclipsed a wide range of other issues of importance to fishermen in the South East. The NFFO as a result is to convene a meeting of interested fishermen in Shoreham on 22nd September to discuss the best way forward.

Tony Delahunty from Selsey Fishermen’s Association said:

“We recognise the importance of getting some kind of resolution to the problems of quota shortage in the under-10m fisheries but there are other important issues that directly affect our members that are not being addressed because of this exclusive focus on a single issue. Marine conservation zones, Defra’s plans for crab and lobster management and CFP reform, are equally important and are not getting the attention they deserve from a South East perspective”.

“That is why we have asked the NFFO to reinvigorate its South East Committee to ensure that we have a voice where it counts. For many years the SE Committee was an effective channel that brought our concerns to prominence in a coherent way. It is important that that voice is reinstated or we are all going to be losers”.

“From what I have seen, by attending a couple of meetings of the NFFO Executive, there is strength in working together as an industry rather than splitting into factions and an active South East Committee would ensure that the issues that are of concern to us would be raised”.

The meeting is to be held at the Ropetackle Centre, Little High Street, Shoreham by Sea, West Sussex, BN43 5EG, at 7pm on Thursday 22nd September.

Chaired by the Director General, Lori Evans, the meeting reviewed the main themes in this year’s ICES advice, discussed the main economic trends in the fisheries and took initial reactions from an industry panel which included the NFFO. All the main European fisheries organisations and a large number of NGOs were present.

Director General

The Director General affirmed that the TACs and quota decisions this year must be seen within the context, and as far as possible, should be consistent with the anticipated direction of CFP reform. The Commission conceded that the general stocks picture was one of “slow improvement”, especially in the Atlantic and nearby fisheries. The trends for the Mediterranean were not as positive. The fixed points in the Commission’s approach were:

• Greater reliance on long term management plans
• Phasing out overfishing where the stock parameters are known
• Adopting a more cautious approach where the conservation status of the stock is unknown

NFFO

The NFFO, in reacting to the Commission’s Policy Statement on Fishing Opportunities for 2012 and the presentations, made a number of points:

• Destinations: The Director General is correct when she says that there is a broad consensus on the destination for European Fisheries: well managed, high yield, fisheries. But that must be qualified by the words “where possible”, especially in relation to mixed fisheries, as science suggests that it is unlikely to be able to achieve MSY for all stocks simultaneously, not least because of predation patterns. There are also profound disagreements on the route to be taken to get to the destination, especially in the context of an unreformed CFP
• Definition of “overfishing”: The Commission has been justly criticised in the past for being alarmist in its public statements about the state of the stocks. We welcome therefore the greater precision in the definition of “overfishing” now used, in which the term is used in a technical sense in the proximity of each stock to maximum sustainable yield. This is very different from conveying the impression that stocks are heading towards collapse or extinction.
• Trends: As an example of the general trends evident in many of our fisheries, in the North Sea, ICES advice this year suggests that of 23 stocks, 2 display negative trends, the conservation status of 4 are unknown and the rest are either stable or heading in the right direction. Of the two that display negative trends one is saithe, which has been fished at or near MSY for around five years. This sends a signal that either the assessment is incorrect, or it is possible to do everything right in management terms and still face problems because of exogenous factors
• Data Deficient Stocks: The RACs have been involved in a close dialogue with ICES over data deficient stocks over the last year. The Commission’s proposal to apply a blanket 25% reduction on all TACS of data deficient stocks is wholly disproportionate and amounts to something perilously close to collective punishment. There are many different reasons why ICES may not be able to provide an analytical assessment for any given stock, not all of them the fault of the fishing industry or the member states. The problem can lie with the assessment model, financial resource issues, or with the absence of historical data. It is essential that the Commission, having made its point that member states should address their data deficiency issues, now abandons its blanket and punitive proposals and adopts a reasoned case- by-case approach. Arbitrary cuts in TACs in mixed fisheries can have only one outcome: an increase in regulatory discards.
• Discards: Removing discards generated as an unintended by-product of CFP regulations will be a precondition for phasing out discards within the CFP more generally. Taking the Director General at her word, that the TACs and quotas regulation must align itself with direction of CFP reform, it will be important that the Commission in framing its formal proposal addresses the issue of discards generated through the level of TACs set. This applies especially to fisheries for which a cosmetic zero TAC is set, or where a blanket 25% reduction is applied. We agree that it is important to do what can be done to reduce discards now in terms of the policy decisions that will be made this autumn. This largely lies in the hands of the Commission.
• Long Term Management Plans: We strongly support the movement towards the management of stocks on the basis of coherent, well thought-through, long term management plans. At the same time, we shouldn’t shy away from amending plans that are clearly not fit for purpose. STECF and ICES have issued a damning report on the performance of the EU Cod Management Plan, criticising the fact that it is based on two false assumptions. The Commission is now faced with a dilemma: it can carry on into 2012 with a fundamentally flawed plan (with its pre-programmed reductions in effort and TACs), or it can propose interim arrangements for 2012, pending a more profound revision within the context of co-decision making with the Parliament. We make the point that it would be unsupportable to continue blithely with a plan, the central planks of which generate discards, have a very oblique(if any) relationship to a reduction in fishing mortality and cause widespread economic dislocation. STECF’s endorsement of the approach to discard reduction and cod avoidance enshrined in Article 13 of the plan points the way forward.
• Fisheries Science: We took the opportunity to draw attention to the scale of cooperation and collaboration between the fishing industry and fisheries scientists, in order to refute the notion that there is a fundamental conflict between the scientists and fishermen. Collaboration is taking place across the board, through fisheries science partnerships, the development of long term management plans, within the RACs and on the issue of data deficiencies.
• What works? The Federation invited the Commission to examine what works and what doesn’t work in terms of specific fisheries management measures. Amongst the measures that the evidence suggests don’t work are blindly cutting TACs within the context of multi-species mixed fisheries. Effort control is another busted flush. Against the background of what is expected to be a highly critical report by the European Court of Auditors on overcapacity, it is worth considering the relationship between publically funded decommissioning schemes and those fisheries in which positive stock developments are now evident. The Celtic Sea fisheries, North Sea Plaice and even North Sea cod are good places to ask the question as to how much the current positive trends are attributable to publically funded decommissioning schemes in the member states.

Other Contributors

Strong, well argued, points were made by a number of other participants in relation to their fisheries. These included:

• the need to align TACs and quota decisions with initiatives to reduce discards, strengthen the economic viability of the fleets and secure the involvement and support of the industry in the development of long term management plans
• The urgent need for better ways to manage multi-species fisheries. In this context the Commission drew attention to new work on this issue within ICES, and the NFFO alerted the meeting to a major conference, planned by the RACs on mixed fisheries, to be held next January.
• The need for a more sophisticated and differentiated approach to understanding economic developments within the industry, including an appreciation of the different price elasticity in different stocks

Oceana, an environmental NGO, noted the positive stock trends but pointed to a number of examples where stocks were not responding to management measures. It also considered that the 25% blanket reduction on TACs for data deficient stock “was a good option” but no explanation was provided to back this opinion.

Commission

In summing up, the Commission:

• Noted the constructive spirit in which the meeting had been held
• Hoped that this spirit of engagement would continue through the rest of the autumn discussions on TACs and into the important dialogue on CFP reform
• Noted that the data deficiency issue was a major problem that required serious political attention by the member states. A greater degree of commitment was required from the member states and the Commission would use all levers at its disposal to remove data bottle-necks.
• It was necessary to rethink the Data Collection Regulation as part of a more profound review of how science would be provided within a reformed CFP
• The very positive work emerging from the RACs on data deficiency was commended and the RACs were urged to expand this initiative but to ensure that it was coherent with the provisions of the data collection regulation
• A priority was the development of new science that would allow for better management of mixed fisheries; this work is under way in ICES and a multi-species model for the Baltic has already been completed
• Striking the right balance between out-take in the current year and building stocks to MSY would be critical
• It would be important to evaluate the implementation of long term management plans and those that are revealed not to be working would have to be revised. These revisions should be within the context of an evolution towards an ecosystem approach.
• Fisheries science partnerships and collaboration should be facilitated by the member states
• The Commission would continue to apply the precautionary approach but would be listening to points made about the right response to data deficiencies
• The need to ensure that TAC decisions are consistent with the direction of the reform would be maintained
• There was an absolute need for industry buy-in for the broad direction of change within the reform
• Doing nothing is not an option

The Commission’s Proposal on TACs and Quotas for 2012 is expected to be published on 25th September.

The survey is part of a broader initiative to bring industry knowledge into the fore in fisheries science and fisheries policy through annual fisheries reports.

A step-by-step format guides all those willing to contribute their knowledge and experience through the process. The results put fishermen’s knowledge on a much more systematic and therefore influential, footing.

Davey Hill, President of the NFFO said: “This is how we can break free of the claim that fishermen’s knowledge is merely “anecdotal” and therefore incapable of being taken into account in fish stock assessments”.

“The more fishermen who complete this survey, the more difficult it will be for scientists and fisheries managers to ignore the results. It will be possible to compare and contrast the industry’s direct experience with the views based on assessment models. This is very exciting and if enough people support the survey will amount to a breakthrough” he added.

“Over the years I have heard plenty dissatisfaction expressed about fisheries science on the quayside and in the wheelhouse. With this survey it is possible to move beyond moaning to actually change the science. If the survey, in good faith, generates enough evidence for an emerging trend, the scientists are duty bound to take it into account.

“I strongly urge you all to take the very short time that it takes to complete the survey. This is your and our future.”

A new phase now begins. From the recommendations of the projects, the process now moves to the public bodies, government and the Minister to decide on sites to go forward for designation, accompanying conservation objectives and to consider the management measures required within the zones to meet these objectives.

Designation

Taking stock of what the MPA Fishing Coalition (MPAC) has achieved since it was formed in February of 2010, it is possible to say that MPAC has engaged Government and the statutory nature conservancy bodies at the highest levels and held them to detailed account. In doing so, it has forced Defra, the MMO and the statutory nature conservancy bodies to address a number of critically important questions that were previously in the shadows:

• The rushed timeframe for the process of designating MCZs
• Weaknesses in the fishing industry representation on the regional projects
• The weakness of the science and knowledge base being used to make decisions on site selections.
• The issue of displacement of fishing vessels from their customary fishing grounds

At the local level, representatives from the Coalition’s constituent bodies, including the NFFO, have worked hard against difficult odds to ensure that the final recommendations at least avoid the worst site selections. It is fair to say that these efforts have not removed all the possible dangers, given the scale of the task and the forces arrayed against them. These included working:

• Within a timeframe that has precluded careful consideration and refinement of the site selections
• Across multiple fisheries, again without adequate time for wider consultation
• Within a framework which despite pretensions as a process of stakeholder engagement, was essentially a top-down application of a set of theoretical design rules, overseen by a science advisory panel, the membership and composition of which has been challenged by the Coalition for its lack of balance
• With “stakeholders” some of whom actually have little or no stake in the outcomes and others who hold a political agenda to constrain fishing, with or without evidence
• Within a process that tended to isolate dissent or expressions of concern from the sea users affected as minority positions within a broader silent or unconcerned “consent”

At least part of these problems can be traced back to the Marine and Coastal Access Act, passed into law in an atmosphere of feverish moral panic and which inadequately addressed how to achieve an appropriate balance between the marine environment and human use.

The need to protect rare and vulnerable marine life is understood and supported by all associated with the MPA Fishing Coalition. Nonetheless, the percentage targets required in the ecological network guidance provided by statutory nature conservation bodies to guide the selection process goes well beyond what is reasonable or justifiable, given that some estimates put the trawling footprint as covering between 5.4% and 21.4% of English and Welsh waters. Even “rare and threatened” features have already turned out to be quite common when the evidence has been gathered. Leaving aside the celebrated pink sea fan, once thought rare and now seen as “widespread”, sabellaria spinulosa reef (ross worm), also once thought rare and threatened turns out to be far from rare and thrives in areas that are subject to extensive disturbance.

At their worst, the Projects have deliberately selected sites in areas and on sea bed that forms the basis for sustainable fisheries – mud and the nephrops fishery being the worst example. The harmful economic, social and environmental consequences of this approach have been ignored.

One of the immediate tasks facing the Coalition is to right the wrongs in the recommendations or at least to ensure that they don’t go forward as candidate MCZs to become part of the designated network.

Conservation Objectives and Management Measures

The beginning of consideration of the conservation objectives and measures (which could range from light monitoring to complete closure) marks an important juncture. Whereas the statutory nature conservancy bodies have so far played a central role, it has been made clear that management decisions will be made by the fisheries managers – IFCAs, Marine Management Organisation, Defra, devolved administrations and the CFP, dependent on their area of jurisdiction.

In the regional projects, the transition between identifying sites and considering possible management measures has, however, proven to be problematic, with the regional stakeholder groups in some cases invited to make broad recommendations on the type of management measures required to achieve conservation objectives – to maintain the existing conservation status of an area, or to “recover” it from a degraded state. It is highly inappropriate for broad stakeholder groups to be allocated a role in determining management measures that apply exclusively to the fishing industry. They lack the expertise and legitimate interest for this role, which should be the direct and exclusive role of fisheries managers and the relevant fishing industry representatives.

Given their inappropriate composition and remit it is perhaps not surprising that some of the Stakeholder Groups, against the express opinion of the fishing sector representatives, have sought blanket bans on mobile fishing within many MCZs. In other cases initial assessments conducted by the statutory nature conservation bodies in collaboration with public authorities have also identified blanket bans. If this crude and disproportionate approach was accepted it would rule out any form of agreed zoning within MCZs, through which protection can be provided for a vulnerable feature, whilst also allowing fishing within the remaining parts of the MCZ. Without this type of approach the displacement effects would be huge and the social and economic costs enormous.

Another area of controversy lies with “reference areas” – additional MCZs to be left as “controls” for scientific monitoring but which would ban all forms of fishing. Whilst we support marine science, where it has a clearly defined and legitimate purpose, reference areas themselves have no legal basis in the Marine Act, are so far undefined and isolated from any coherent scientific programme, and are being scattered like confetti as an ecologist’s wish list.

Thankfully, the Coalition’s discussions with Defra and the NFFO’s discussions with the MMO, point to a more constructive, reasoned and proportionate approach. Having learned the lessons of a blunt and crude approach in Lyme Bay, fisheries managers appear eager to avoid repeating the same mistakes. The Coalition has from its inception made plain that it believes that there is a good way and a bad way to introduce a network of MCZs and a constructive, balanced dialogue between decision makes and the people in the fishing industry affected lies at the heart of the right approach.

The MPA Fishing Coalition has served its purpose well through the regional project recommendation process and will now turn to the task of resisting poorly conceived site selections and ensuring that management measures are applied in a fair and balanced way.

Even in the recent past it was not uncommon for the fishing industry to utterly reject the validity and worth of fisheries science and fish stock assessments in particular. And fisheries scientists tended to view the fishing industry, at best as uneducated about the intricacies of their work or, at worst, a toxic mix of naïve short-term self-interest and belligerence.

Whilst strands of these attitudes remain in both camps, it is now more common to find fishermen and their organisations working in close collaboration with fisheries scientists, arriving at shared conclusions about the state of the stocks and jointly developing solutions to the challenges facing fisheries.

What underpins this change?

Compartmentalisation to Collaboration

Ever since the international marine and fisheries body, ICES, was established in Copenhagen in 1902 to provide objective, impartial, scientific advice to the governments which funded it, close dialogue and collaboration with the fishing industry was perceived to risk the very impartiality and objectivity that was part of its founding ethos. This mindset led to a very distant relationship between fishermen and scientists for a very long time. Any contact with the fishing industry was through very long and formal lines of communication; as a result scientists, policy makers and fishing industry heavily compartmentalised. For a whole century dialogue was the exception rather than the rule and tended to be irregular and latterly, confrontational. In governments’ eyes the privileged form of knowledge produced by scientists automatically took precedence over other forms of knowledge, such as that held by working fishermen and was automatically the exclusive reference point for policy decisions.

From the 1970s onwards European fisheries moved with bewildering speed from being an economic sphere with minimal government regulation, to one subject to very a heavy and complex although generally ineffective, control regime. Entirely in tune with this command and control approach to fisheries management fisheries science maintained its remote, top-down ethos.

Meanwhile, the system was crumbling, especially in respect to the important demersal fisheries in EC waters. Fleets built on profits from what turned out to be a temporary spike in stock abundance (the so-called gadoid outburst ) became a serious liability when the environmental conditions changed and stock recruitment for this important group of species returned to a historically average level. This imbalance between the capital in the industry and the available resources was greatly intensified by freely available EC and national construction and modernisation grants and the EC price support mechanism both which created perverse incentives. Science tracked the changing stock trends but it became clear that the management regime wasn’t remotely up to the task of delivering policies that would deal with either the legacy of overcapacity or its impact on the stocks. Whilst the cumbersome Brussels based regime blundered around searching for solutions, and member states resisted paying for the capacity reduction that would have addressed the core issue it became clear that the system of Total Allowable Catches which was intended to constrain out-take from the fishery, as well as allocate shares to the different member states, was under serious strain. This eventually led to the dead end of effort control.

As a fleet well out of balance with available resources struggled to maintain viability in changed conditions, under- reported landings, misreported landings and perversely sometimes over-reported landings, comprehensively undermined the scientific stock assessments. The backbone of the assessments were the official landings statistics and as these veered sharply from actual landings in most member states, the ICES system struggled to cope. Many European whitefish fisheries entered a vicious downward spiral. Misreported landings, mainly driven by fleet overcapacity undermined the stock assessments; this in turn led to lower TACs, which in its turn led to even greater misreporting as vessels fought to survive.

Within this failing and dysfunctional system, fishermen pointed to the inadequacy of the stock assessments and unrealistic quotas; scientists for the most part maintained their assertions of superior knowledge and emphasised the downward trajectory of the main stock trends; and when the two sides did meet the confrontations were not pretty. Over time, management measures became blunter but not necessarily more effective.

Emerging from this maelstrom of failed policy, failed science and failed fisheries has taken time and is still work in hand. But hitting rock bottom had at least one positive effect as it brought about a re-evaluation both within the scientific community and the fishing industry of how we should relate to each other. Policy failure had been the catalyst for change.

A Change of Direction

The fishing industry still enjoys robust exchanges with fisheries scientists on the quality of the stock assessments. The difference is that these now take place within the context of a widespread system of collaboration and dialogue. These are constructive, purposeful discussions from which both parties benefit. They mark an evolution within the fishing industry but equally they have required fisheries scientists to move away from their customary distant relations with the fishery towards a more collaborative approach. These developments have taken time and contain a number of different strands.

North Sea Dialogue:One of the first of these strands was the North Sea Commission (Fisheries Partnership), which emerged from the Haddo House Conference in 2000. This was one of the first times that fisheries scientists and fishermen and their representatives sat down together, on an international basis, to discuss and analyse specific stock assessments. Under the august chairmanship of a former fisheries minister and subsequently a retired and well respected director of a fisheries laboratory, individual stock assessments were analysed jointly, sometimes with the involvement of a scientist from outside the ICES system as peer reviewer. It is hard to overstate the value of these early discussions. From the industry’s perspective, it was interesting to witness disagreements between the scientists, undermining the pretence that science is an absolute uncontested truth, rather than provisional knowledge based on the best but always imperfect information that we hold at the time. Ideas emerged that ultimately led to new scientific approaches based on participative research and a broader perspective which absorbed wider lessons about the relationship between good governance and effective fisheries management. It is significant that several of the middle level scientists who were engaged in those early discussions have now risen to the pinnacle of the ICES system with a genuine appreciation of the value of dialogue and collaboration with the industry. Ultimately, the North Sea Commission (Fisheries Partnership) led to and was instrumental in the formation of the North Sea Regional Advisory Council, where the dialogue and collaboration has continued and developed.

Fisheries Science Partnership Projects: Another important development in the emergence of a new relationship between fishers and fisheries scientists was the establishment, following discussions between the NFFO and the then UK Fisheries Minister in 2003 of the Fisheries Science Partnership. Not to be confused with the North Sea Commission (Fisheries Partnership), the FSP is a Defra funded programme of collaborative research projects using commercial fishing vessels and CEFAS scientists to jointly investigate and produce new data on issues jointly agreed by the industry, scientists and policy makers as valuable and important. It is the antithesis of the compartmentalised approach and is regarded in published scientific papers as a model of participative research. The use of commercial fishing vessels has not just provided useful data, informed policy decisions and complemented the more formal assessment techniques; it has provided the means through which many participating fishermen have for the first time worked collaboratively on the quayside and on the vessels with fisheries scientists. The Defra Fisheries Science Partnership, which initially drew on experiences of collaborative fisheries science in Norway and the United States, has in turn become a model for projects across Europe. A major conference organised by Belgium last November, as part of their EU presidency, showed just how far we had come in developing participative fisheries science.

Regional Advisory Councils: The arrival of regional advisory councils in the 2002 CFP reform provided another platform for the dialogue between the fishing industry, other stakeholders and fisheries scientists. ICES has made a concerted effort to establish strong links with the RACs and individual scientists from national laboratories have played a central role in shaping RAC advice, acting as a sounding board in internal RAC discussions and helping to develop advice on long term management plans. Many regret that scientific input into the RACs has been rather too ad hoc and dependent on the varying commitment and resources of the national laboratories but there is no denying that substantial progress has been made in establishing regular and mutually constructive exchanges between fisheries scientists and fisheries stakeholders. As an example, the recent North West Waters RAC contribution to the review of the EU Cod Management Plan was based on detailed discussions between fishing industry representatives and fisheries scientists with direct knowledge of the Irish Sea and West of Scotland fisheries. In the final analyses the RAC is responsible for its own interpretation of the data and scientific viewpoints in framing its advice but there is no doubt that that advice has been hugely strengthened through that close dialogue.

Fishermen’s Knowledge: An ever deepening dialogue between fishing stakeholders and scientists has in recent years led to a greater appreciation of the vast stores of knowledge held by individual working fishermen but in the main left untapped by science. Understanding of local ecologies, spatial and temporal patterns in specific fisheries, as well as fishing techniques and fishing strategies are all pivotal to both fisheries science and effective fisheries policy. These are precisely the areas of specialised knowledge held by fishermen. Accessing that knowledge, even where it has been acknowledged, is not straightforward as it is generally in a form that can be dismissed as unsystematic or anecdotal. But it can be done and through fisheries science partnership projects, industry annual fisheries reports, and exchanges within the RACs some of that knowledge is being transferred and incorporated into fisheries science without undermining the standards of objectivity and impartiality so highly valued by scientists. The strength of incoming recruitments and the spatial pattern of fishing are two areas of fishing industry knowledge that are of immediate interest to both scientists and policy makers. Real time information on changes in the marine environment, including year-classes, are likely to be picked up first by those who spend their working lives at sea. And the spatial patterns of fishing are of critical importance to those who are engaged in the design and implementation of effective marine conservation zones or offshore wind-farms. Technology is an ever more powerful tool in providing readily available information for policy makers but it often requires a high level of dialogue and collaboration to interpret and make sense of the raw data.

Data Deficiencies: Some 60% of ICES assessments fail to achieve full analytical status with population estimates. Sometimes there are good scientific or resource issues for this but equally often the problem lies in data deficiencies that have their roots in the era of management collapse and the subsequent degradation of the ICES assessment system. In a recent initiative, and where the problem can be identified as something the fishing industry can do something about, the North West Waters RAC has established a series of interventions through appointed data coordinators who will coordinate with ICES assessment teams in fixing specific data problems. Where the problem is, for example, absence of historical discard data there is little that can be done. But where there is an absence of current data and it is feasible for the industry to provide it, the role of the data coordinator is to mobilise the industry, and sometimes the pertinent member state, to take remedial action. This is no quick fix but will over time improve the quality of the data being used in the assessments and the ICES benchmark process. Not all assessments are seriously data deficient and not all assessments can be fixed through this type of initiative but where it is relevant it should be possible to make significant improvements. This is a win-win process because strengthened data improves the scientific assessment, informs policy decisions and ultimately (all other things being equal) should lead to higher quotas as fisheries managers will not feel obliged to apply a severe application of the precautionary approach in these circumstances.

GAP 1 and 2and Jakfish Projects: Recognition of the value of working collaboratively with fisheries stakeholders, within a framework of good governance, has generated important projects initiated from the scientific side. One of the most important of these is the GAP projects, which explicitly aims to close the gap between scientists and fisheries stakeholders. A project with different emphasis but similar aims called Jakfish has supported and informed the North Sea RAC in developing a long term management plan for nephrops amongst others.

Over-complex Assessment Models: One of the encouraging aspects to emerge from the very healthy dialogue between the fishing sector and fisheries scientists is the self-reflection within ICES that it has engendered. Scientists are currently questioning whether data-hungry assessment models of ever increasing sophistication is the way to go, if gathering the data is problematic. The EU Data Collection Framework Regulation may over time increase the availability of consistent and timely data but ICES is also exploring whether simpler models, using industry sources of data such as fisheries science partnerships may provide part of the solution. There is probably room for all of these initiatives as ICES, fisheries managers and the fishing industry work to reboot the assessment process where it has collapsed.

Uncertainty: It has been said that in fisheries there are only two certainties; one is uncertainty and the other is change. The emergence of new forms of dialogue and collaboration between the fishing sector and fisheries scientists is important and timely because uncertainties about impacts that environmental change may have on commercial fish stocks are set to grow rather than diminish. Dealing with uncertainty requires a move away from the pretence that science has all the answers to hand, towards an acknowledgement of the limits of our collective knowledge and therefore a need to arrive jointly at conclusions about how to respond to these inherent constraints. Dealing with uncertainties requires a platform for this kind of dialogue and the RACs are one important area where this can take place.

Demand for New Data: It is not just environmental change that creates demand for new approaches to scientific knowledge. The requirement for an integrated approach to sustainable development within the marine environment requires a comprehensive and coherent evidence base for decisions on marine protected areas and marine spatial planning generally. The experience of establishing European SACs and domestic marine conservation zones speaks loudly of the inadequacies of the present evidence base; as does the experience of round 1 and 2 offshore wind-farms. In these circumstances there is a very real danger that sites and management measures are adopted not only fail to provide protection to vulnerable features and habitat but perversely increase environmental degradation as well as causing social and economic dislocation. There is simply not sufficient money available to do the research and data work that would provide a reasonable evidence base for the MPAs planned. In these circumstances the need for the kind of detailed engagement between scientists, policy makers and stakeholders at the right spatial level is critical. In this it would be folly to ignore the experience of the last 20 years in the commercial fisheries.

Conclusions and Ambitions

The past decade has seen important progress in the development of a high level of dialogue and collaboration between the fishing industry and fisheries scientists. After reaching rock bottom at the turn of the century,with the effective collapse of many aspects of the management and assessment systems, both groups are now working within a range of different initiatives to strengthen the evidence base on which important policy decisions are made. This has involved abandoning an outdated compartmentalisation which has been a barrier to communication and collaboration in the past. The media presentation of omniscient scientists and fishermen as pantomime villains departs from reality and does no justice to either group – and certainly doesn’t help us deal with the challenges that we jointly face. Hopefully this article will go some way to redressing that imbalance.

Although much progress has been made already, the NFFO has high ambitions for the future. A close working relationship between fisheries scientists and the fishing industry is at the heart of our plans. The use of commercial fishing vessels as research platforms and reference fleets, the close cooperation needed to develop effective long term management plans, as well as a CFP reform that would increase the scope for delegated responsibilities, all require a high degree of cooperation and engagement between fishermen and fisheries scientists. Much has been achieved but equally there is much more to be achieved in travelling down this road together.

Although the number of stocks under long term management plans is increasing, theoretically reducing the significance of the December Council, the Commission’s suggestion that all stocks suffering from “data deficiencies” should be subject to a 25% reduction in TAC, ensures that we will have to fight to block this perverse and entirely counterproductive approach.

At the same time, the STECF/ICES report on the EU Cod Management Plan points to the need for serious changes and the first issue to address is what kind of interim arrangements should apply for 2012 given that the present pre-programmed reductions delivers high levels of discards. One of the clear lessons from an analysis of the current Plan is that a tailored approach is required for the Irish Sea.

Whilst ICES advice has now acknowledged the misalignment of the Celtic Sea cod TAC with the fish on the grounds, there is frustration at the slow response from the Commission to requests for a mid-year increase in the TAC. However, it is not difficult to see there is also mounting pressure for the adoption of accompanying technical measures to improve selectivity in the main fisheries which catch amounts of cod. All this will require extensive input from industry organisations, including the NFFO and the RACs if we are to avoid blunt and inappropriate requirements. The Federation will also be playing a significant part in the development of a long term management plan for the demersal fisheries in the Celtic Sea.

Consideration of the management measures that should apply within marine conservation zones and SACs is coming to a head along with the consequences of fleet displacement if the process fails to deliver a balanced and well founded approach. At these can range from additional monitoring to complete closure to fishing vessels, how the issue will be dealt with will be critical.

On the shellfish front, Defra is keen to move forward to address latent capacity through the extension of a rights-based system to the crab and lobster fisheries. This needs a great deal of thinking through to get the right balance between progressive conservation and flexibility for the inshore fleets and the Federation’s Shellfish Committee will be working to strike the right balance.

The consultation exercise on how to address the quota shortage facing some under-10 metre fisheries has turned a spotlight on the wide variety of views even within the inshore sector. Making progress in moving towards a system that delivers viability, stability and flexibility requires a great deal of work and the Federation will be at the heart of those discussions.

The NFFO is involved in four regional advisory councils: North Sea; North West Waters; Pelagic and Long Distance RACs. The RACs have proved themselves as an effective platform for cooperation and collaboration on a regional basis, involving fishing organisations from other member states as well as other stakeholder groups. The workload is heavy but the tangible results can be seen in the emergence of solid advice on long term management plans, cod recovery, discard reduction, CFP reform, maximum sustainable yield and dialogue with ICES etc.

Although the main discussions on CFP reform aren’t expected to take place until after the year end, Defra and the RACs are already working on and refining their positions and it is important that we are centrally involved in both. All parties seem to agree on the urgent need to decentralise decision making within the CFP but there is great uncertainty about the detail of how this will be achieved and what it will look like.

The threat posed by a drift into a concordat with Scotland that lacks transparency but could amount to the biggest change to domestic fisheries policy for years and disenfranchise the English and Northern Irish fleets will continue to be strenuously resisted.

The media attention on the discards issue generally fails to explain that discards in our fisheries have been reduced by 50% over that last decade, debunking the myth that nothing is being done. Nevertheless, the challenges to the reputation of our industry caused by those fisheries with high levels of discards, not to mention the waste of the resource, demands our serious engagement to ensure that discard initiatives tackle the real problems and avoid the media-focused sticking plaster approach. A good first step would be to avoid adding to the rules that in themselves generate discards.

Round 3 wind-farms and other offshore renewable projects have the potential to displace fishing activity from its customary grounds on a temporary or permanent basis. The Federation is working with the Crown Estate to identify the most critical fishing areas with precision so that they can be fully taken into account in the design of the projects through all their phases.

Ministers will never stray far from the science when making policy decisions, not least because it provides cover for difficult decisions and for when things subsequently go wrong. That is why it is vital to ensure that the science is as good as it can possibly be and why the Federation has taken the lead in initiatives to plug some of the holes in the present stock assessments.

The implementation and enforcement of fisheries policy is as important as the original decisions and that is why the NFFO maintains a regular dialogue with the Marine Management Organisation.

Zero TACs are applied where, as with skates and some shark species, there is a problem with the conservation status of some species and the Commission has no immediate remedy to hand. A zero TAC provides the illusion of remedial action. The reality is that this type of approach has next to no impact on fishing mortality but does generate discards. In addition to skate, porbeagle shark and spurdog find themselves in this position. The Federation will be working this autumn within a NWWRAC Focus Group on customised approaches that genuinely rebuild depleted stocks and move away from cosmetic measures that generate discards. This is not an easy or straightforward task but experience within the RACs has shown that getting people who know what they are talking about rarely fails to generate useful initiatives.

The EU/ Norway annual agreement is of direct importance to many of the Federation’s members and so as usual we will be devoting much effort to its outcome

Mackerel

Where the Federation can add to the pressure for a satisfactory outcome of the highly damaging mackerel dispute between the EU and Iceland and Faeroes it will be putting its shoulder to the wheel.

Marine Spatial Planning

The first two marine spatial plans are in currently in preparation. It is essential that the fishing industry’s concerns and interests are fully integrated into this process, which is why the NFFO will be devoting time and resources to covering the key meetings.

And the Rest

A short note like this skates unfairly over all the other issues and initiatives that the Federation is constantly involved in, such as monitoring and commenting on all incoming safety and training legislation and responding to various consultations with the industry’s concerns and viewpoint. This bread and butter work is of direct benefit to all in the fishing industry but rarely gets the dues it deserves.

Free Riders

One of the frustrations faced by the Federation is that the benefits of all this work are felt across the industry irrespective of whether or not the vessel pays a membership subscription to the NFFO. There is little that can be done about this problem if shame and embarrassment don’t work, although it is also heartening that so many fishermen and vessel operators, large and small, are willing to play their part.

Those words, expressed by the scientists charged with reviewing the EU Cod Management Plan are:

Fishing morality should not be expected to follow trends in fishing effort.

Those rather dry, measured, scientific words carry huge significance because they challenge the attempt to rebuild the cod stocks through effort limitations (aka days -at-sea constraints) – one of the two main pillars of the current Cod Management Plan.

Although the NFFO, the fishing industry more generally, and the regional advisory councils, have repeatedly challenged the notion that reducing time at sea is an effective way of reducing fishing mortality, the significance of the statement lies in who is saying it and the context in which it is being said.

A joint ICES /STECF Working Group, which contains fisheries scientists from all of the member states affected by the cod plan, and some which are not, was charged under comprehensive terms of reference, with reviewing the Cod Management Plan agreed by the Council of Ministers in November 2008. A scoping meeting was held in Copenhagen in March of this year, followed in June, by a drafting meeting in Hamburg. In the interim, a battery of scientists, working to those terms of reference, have sifted evidence, analysed trends, listened to stakeholders and drawn their conclusions. Their report was quality-controlled in July by a plenary meeting of the EU’s Scientific, Technical and Economic Committee for Fisheries which endorsed its methods and findings. It now goes to the Commission, member states and the European Parliament for consideration. Largely on the basis of this report a decision will be made on whether a revised cod plan is required.

A Misguided Notion

The notion that constraining the time fishing vessels spend at sea could systematically reduce fishing mortality within a mixed, multi-species, multi-gear, multi-jurisdiction, fishery was a forlorn and misguided idea from the outset. Its adoption owed more to Brussels’ belief that effort (or input) control could be a simple and straightforward conservation measure to administer; especially because at the time the quota system was demonstrably failing because of black fish landings. It has been anything but. When the complexity of the first cod plan (2003-2008) proved unmanageable, responsibility for implementing effort control was shifted to member states through the allocation of individual pots of Kilowatt days for member states. The apparent flexibility associated with this approach has been quickly recognised as illusory. In fact, the system of effort control through Kilowatt days has become one of the more byzantine parts of the CFP.

In many respects the proponents of effort control have been behind the curve. Landing controls such as buyers and sellers’ registration, the reduction in the capacity of the fleets and a different mind-set within the industry, have pushed misreported landings off stage, a point accepted and commented on in the STECF/ICES report. Instead, there remains a problem of unaccounted removals of cod, of which discards are a significant but by no means the only factor. Few could credibly argue, in the face of the evidence of the last few years, that effort control is a realistic or effective approach to reducing discards. Discards of mature cod have soared at the same time that effort control has drastically ratcheted down permitted time at sea.

The North Sea and North West regional advisory councils both submitted position papers to the cod review, pointing out that the current management plan is based on two flawed assumptions: that a reduction in fishing effort (time at sea) would lead to a proportionate reduction in fishing mortality; and that relying on drastic TAC reductions would bring fishing mortality on cod down. The STECF/ICES report shares these views.

The report however, does highlight one area where the Cod Management Plan is getting it right, although even it is hamstrung by an excessively bureaucratic approach. This is the article 13 exemptions which motivate the industry and member states to adopt cod avoidance plans of various kinds, in return for exemption, or at least significant relief from, days at sea restrictions. The report acknowledges that this part of the plan has been effective, although much more could be done to build on the promising start that has been made, especially through the involvement of the industry in the design and implementation of cod avoidance measures and discard reduction initiatives.

The STECF/ICES report’s critical view of what has, or what can be achieved through effort control echoes the findings of a recent world-wide survey by researchers from Washington University. This report found high levels of over-exploitation in 47% of fisheries managed on this basis. This compare unfavourably with fisheries based on various types of quota constraints.

What Now?

The report will now form the basis for discussions within the Commission, Council of Ministers and the European Parliament. There is a presumption within the report that the Commission will want to move on to the next stage, which is the preparation of an impact assessment for a revised cod plan. STECF gives some strong indicators on the approach that should be considered as a replacement, notably:

“Overall STECF concludes that the plan is not delivering reduced F and additionally in many areas does not have stakeholders’ support. A plan which stakeholders support is more likely to succeed because the stakeholders’ actions are needed to contribute to its success”.

However, a cod plan that is based on the support, involvement and cooperation of the principle stakeholders is incompatible with a framework that requires pre-programmed 25% reductions or similar hefty cuts in effort and TACs annually, when those cuts threaten the economic viability of those vessels.

Significantly, the Report also challenges the notion that it is currently possible to calculate the biomass reference points that are used to trigger these reductions because of endemic weaknesses in the assessments.

The immediate question is whether it is possible to turn Commission policy around in time to at least begin a new approach with more solid foundations next year. It is plain from the STECF report that further pre-programmed cuts in 2012 would:

• Do little or nothing to reduce fishing mortality of cod in the North Sea, Irish Sea or West of Scotland
• Increase the scope for discards
• Increase already severe economic strains within the fleet
• Alienate the very people that STECF/ICES consider should be at the heart of the cod plan

The STECF/ICES report is devastating for the credibility of the current cod plan. The question is whether the decision-makers in the Council, Commission and European Parliament can agree transitional arrangements along the lines suggested in the report in time for 2012, whilst a longer term approach is developed and agreed during the course of that year.

The question of how quotas have become tradable legal rights in the UK, and whether this is a good or bad thing is being conducted, in heated terms, between those who see tradable concessions as a panacea for the failures of fisheries policy and those who see it as a type of crime. This debate is important because it touches the current discussion on the way forward for the under-10m fisheries within domestic fisheries policy but also the direction of CFP reform.

Fishing Concessions and Sustainable Fisheries

On the one side of the argument are the European Commission, Defra and parts of the environmental lobby, which see the allocation of fishing rights, or “fishing concessions”, as a way of achieving sustainable fisheries and breaking free from the “tragedy of the commons”. Their core argument is that allocating fishing rights gives the fishing vessel operators who receive them a vested interest in thinking long term and fishing in ways that preserves or increases their share of the resource, which in effect have become one of their assets. Without that vested interest, the argument runs, individual operators act in a short-term way to maximize immediate profit, leading to the degradation of the overall resource. This is a way in which private interest can be aligned with public policy, with the goal of well managed fish stocks within a healthy ecosystem. It is also seen as a way of dealing with the problem of fleet overcapacity and building a high level of compliance. Vessels that are not viable in a business sense may sell their quota entitlements to other vessels, reducing the capacity of the fleet overall and increasing the profitability of the remaining units. In Denmark this arrangement is said to have produced “happy fishermen, happy ex-fishermen and a happy government”.

Stealth Privatisation of a Public Resource

The counter-view, sometimes expressed in vigorous language by a mix of journalists, lawyers and single issue fishing groups, is that the introduction of this form of rights-based management amounts to the stealth privatisation of a public resource. “The biggest property grab since the Norman invasion” according to one over-excited legal commentator. Not only does the allocation of transferable quota shares enshrine and make permanent injustices already inherent in the quota allocations system, it has developed in the UK without a proper basis in law. The “commodification” of the fisheries resource amounts to a grab by the haves to the disadvantage of the have-nots that parallel the land enclosures in the 18th century. It is suggested that the whole process of quota ownership in the UK is shrouded in mystery that disguises the fact that quota traders –middlemen – or corporate groups outside the fishing industry could, or already do, hold large chunks of UK quota. Even the Government, it is claimed, don’t know or won’t reveal who ultimately owns UK quota.

Polarisation

The polarisation of the debate on where the right balance lies between private access to, and management of, a public resource has not been very helpful. The reduction of the debate into simplistic slogans, misinformation and unsupported assertion might make good copy for a lazy journalist but it doesn’t help us as an industry find a way through undoubtedly difficult issues. We certainly need a debate, not least because fishing concessions and rights-based management are central to the Commission’s CFP proposals as well as Defra’s thinking on domestic fisheries reform. But the strident tone and wild assertions, with weak links to evidence, and failure to make any attempt to understand how the quota management system in the UK has evolved only gets in the way of a clear view ahead.

The polarisation of the debate on rights based management (aka Catch Shares) is a pity.

NFFO Position

The NFFO holds no ideological position on rights based management. We are interested in what works for the fishing industry as a whole. The evidence of the last two decades suggests that the development of a system of rights-based management has helped the UK industry to move beyond the anarchy of the era of black-fish, when under-reporting, misreporting and over-reporting undermined the viability, reputation and of the whitefish sector, along with the scientific assessments on which quotas are ultimately based. It has helped to achieve a high level of compliance and an industry that looks to the future in collaboration with fisheries managers and fisheries scientists. This is not to say that a rights-based system of allocations is automatically the best option in all circumstances. It is not the magic wand that its proponents suggest. It is also true to say that it is those parts of the UK fishing industry that have remained outside the rights- based system – the under-10m fleet – are where problems of quota management are their most acute.

This balanced, proportionate and cautious view is in stark contrast to both the advocates of rights-based management who see it as the solution to everything, and those who see it as a massive and stealthy conspiracy to privatise and monopolise a public resource. In order to draw some semblance of proportion into a debate, that threatens to spin into ever wilder claim and counter claim, we have described below some of the salient features of the current quota management system in the UK that should be taken into account for those interested in arriving at an informed judgement.

Some Salient Points

1. Evolution

The evolution of the UK’s quota arrangements into a system of rights- based management occurred in a fairly pragmatic, incremental, some might say, very British way and has been described elsewhere. There has been no blueprint or ideological driver. There was not so much a property grab as a gradual unplanned evolution towards transferable quotas on the basis of a number of pragmatic changes to the quota management and licensing rules for reasons that made sense in their own terms at the time. The main significance of the introduction of Fixed Quota Allocations in 1999 meant that whereas previously a vessel’s quota entitlement for the following year was based on an average of what it caught in the previous three years, FQAs fixed that amount, thereby removing the rough justice of engine breakdown or similar calamity undermining a vessel’s entitlement. It also removed some element of the race to fish, or in some cases over-reporting of catch simply to hold onto entitlement for the following year (the problem of “ghost fishing”).

2. Historic Rights

The ultimate basis for quota allocations in the UK both before 1999 and for the introduction FQAs in that year was historic access to the resource. Those with a demonstrable track record of participation in the fishery received an allocation proportionate to the level of that participation. This core principle is the same basic starting point as the principle of relative stability in EU and in other international fisheries agreements.

3. Quota transfers with monetary value evolved out of the arrangements for swaps of unutilised quota between producer organisations. Initially all swaps had to be balanced in terms of cod equivalents, and quota entitlements were attached to vessels rather that licences. All this made for a rather rigid system with too much quota underutilised because it was in the “wrong” PO, or attached to the “wrong” vessel in the “wrong” sea area. Allowing unbalanced swaps and attaching the quota entitlement to the licence rather than the vessel were pragmatic adjustments to address these problems but they were important first steps towards tradable quotas. The introduction of FQAs in 1999 and a number of fishing vessel decommissioning schemes where the Government, to save money, allowed decommissioning owners to retain their quota, were also important steps in the introduction of the market into fish quotas.

4. Legal Basis

It has been asserted that there is no legal basis for the kind of delegated responsibility that underpins the UK’s sectoral management system through which producer organisations manage their members’ quotas and tailor quota arrangements to local circumstances. It is true that there is no specific legislative basis for the allocation of quota entitlements to producer organisations; it has all been done on the basis of administrative provisions within existing fisheries legislation, underpinned by consultation with the fishing industry. But given that the Defra’s quota management decisions have been tested very recently in the Courts and found solid there seems no reason to think other than that the legal basis for the current quota management regime is pretty robust. Probably more significant is the fact that the type of delegated responsibility seen in the sectoral management system is a success story and may become the model for the governance of a radically reformed and decentralised CFP. Nevertheless, it would probably be wise, once the CFP reform is settled, that a more formal and transparent legislative footing for a system of explicit use-rights in fisheries is introduced.

5. Transparency and Control

Producer Organisations as collectives of fishermen and fishing vessel operators are the lynchpin of the system and remain the ultimate arbiter of the quotas allocated to them for that year. It is true that for whatever reason there is a lack of transparency at Government level about where “ownership” of the ultimate quota holdings lies, allowing daft stories about quota being held by bodies such as Manchester United to circulate. But POs have been requested by the MMO to provide comprehensive information on the ownership of FQAs within their membership and have complied. More transparency would serve to quell the rumour mill and so we agree that this information, subject to the usual strictures on data protection, should be made public. The suggestion of secrecy only serves to fuel those disposed to conspiracy theories and that is not helpful in the current febrile atmosphere.

6. CFP Reform

The CFP reform proposals published on 13th July include the introduction of a mandatory system of transferable “fishing concessions” applicable to all fishing vessels over 12metres in length and all mobile gear vessels whether they are above or below 12mts. Member states would hold the discretion to apply a system of rights based management to the small scale fleets if minded. Importantly, the new system, if adopted, would be compatible with the principle of relative stability as it would operate within the confines of each member state. “Fishing concessions” would be allocated for 15 years to allow investments to be planned and to provide a degree of security. These arrangements although requiring some changes to the UK’s domestic arrangements are essentially compatible, indeed to some degree based on the current experience of transferable quotas in the UK, Netherlands and Denmark. Nevertheless, there is always scope for concern when a pragmatic, evolutionary domestic approach is about to be replaced by a broad brush, top down European system.

7. Safeguards

What is important with any system of rights-based management is that is accompanied by appropriate safeguards to protect vulnerable components of the fleet from the full force of the market and to prevent over-concentration of quota in too few hands. It is not possible, or necessarily desirable to protect every vessel or fishing job, from the transfer of quota from outgoing vessels to more efficient vessels. But most observers and certainly the NFFO sees the sense in a one-way valve that would allow fishing-rights to be traded between small vessels and from larger vessels to small vessels but not from small vessels to large vessels, if rights based management is applied across the whole fleet. However, we remain to be convinced that extending tradable quotas, as proposed by Defra in its recent consultation, to the under-10m fleet would represent a step forward. The flexibility of the pool system, where vessels fish against monthly catch limits has many advantages for the inshore fleet which traditionally has maintained its viability by changing gear, or target species to adapt to changing circumstances. Equally, the jury is very much out on whether the extension of rights-based management to the crab and lobster fisheries is necessary or desirable.

Plea for a Reasoned Debate

The media thirst for pantomime villains in the fishing industry seems inexhaustible and it is not to the credit of some in our own industry who have pandered to it. Rights based management is important. Carefully and sensitively applied, with proper safeguards, it can in some circumstances, offer a superior way of managing quotas than cumbersome centralised government control. It has worked well for most of the time in the UK, Netherlands and Denmark. It is significant that those parts of the UK fleet not included in the mainstream rights-based management system are those that currently face the most acute quota problems. However, this is not to say however that strong arming the under-10m fleet into a catch share system is the right way forward either.

But rights-based management should not be considered a panacea. In some quarters it is being oversold. Partly this is because it fits with a small government agenda and ultimately as a way to extract resource rental form the fishing industry. It is also seen as a way of achieving low or no cost decommissioning where various EU grandiose fleet reduction policies have failed.

We have to navigate our way through the purists and the ideologues, past those with an axe to grind and those who make a living out of sensationalist nonsense. We have to thoroughly and calmly examine all of the options in front of us and adapt and adopt them to fit our industry’s needs. None of this is easy but it certainly isn’t helped by distorting the terms of the debate, finding conspiracies were none exist, or incendiary language.

This is not a ‘secret concordat’

Perhaps it doesn’t come within the scope of the Official Secrets Act but we have had to rely entirely on hearsay over the content of the Concordat which, if it goes ahead, will amount to the biggest change to fisheries management since the introduction of fishing vessel licensing in the 1980s. This is an appalling lapse in good governance. Weak assurances that our concerns will be looked at have been accompanied by confirmation that the new Concordat has all but been agreed.

One of the issues we are discussing is vessel nationality. The Concordat …specifies that vessels must be administered from the district that they predominantly fish out of.

Part of our fleet fishes in the Norwegian Sector and other northern fishing grounds and, especially under the impact of days-at sea constraints and high fuel costs, have found it expedient in recent years to land their catch into Scottish ports. Equally, Northern Irish vessels have from time to time operated from English or Scottish ports, for shorter or longer periods. Forced assignment of “nationality” for vessels operation in this pattern would potentially carry implications for PO membership, quota management, and effort control and transfer of these to Marine Scotland. We have flagged up our concerns over the consequences of the Concordat in these areas but have no confidence that they are being addressed or even appreciated.

The new arrangements are designed to prevent “admin hopping”.

Leaving aside the politically charged issue of how far within a single member state it is desirable to allow devolved fisheries management to cut across and undermine existing freedoms and flexibilities, we have made the point that the Concordat is the proverbial sledgehammer to crack a nut. There is a simple answer to vessels which change port of administration to avoid management measures, as happened with the introduction of licence capping for the under-10s. Had all transfers been subject to approval by both administrations concerned, not only would there have been no transfers of this type but there would have been no applications to transfer because they would be bound to be rejected. Problem solved. As this is about fishing vessel licences, not registration, the provisions of the Merchant Shipping Act have no bearing on the issue.

Vessels registered and administered from England will still be able to operate out of ports in other territories provided they maintain a genuine link with England, such as having their place of business there

Yes but ……English and Northern Irish vessels forcibly reassigned to the “nationality” that matches their fishing pattern – in this case Scotland -will also, logically, have their quota management and certainly effort allocations transferred to Scottish control too. We have been advised that this means that the Scottish effort pots will be enhanced and the English and Northern Irish pots will be correspondingly depleted as a result. More significantly, management decisions over those allocations will reside with Scotland. The Scottish Government has no responsibility or democratic mandate to take English or Northern Irish stakeholders’ views into account on an equal basis with the indigenous Scottish fleet, and nor would we expect it too. We would take a lot of convincing that our vessels, whether from England or Northern Ireland would receive parity of treatment in Scottish consultative forums, even if we were given formal membership – which of course we have not. Our argument is not with bodies like the Scottish Conservation Credits Group, which has done groundbreaking work but with Defra who, all the signs suggest intend to sell us out for bureaucratic neatness.

This is not an issue that just affects the larger end of the fleet. There are many over and under-10metre vessels on the North East coast which fish out of Scottish ports for a substantial part of the year. Equally, quite a few Scottish vessels fish from English ports for a variety of reasons and varying amounts of time. The Concordat will require a judgement to be made on when these vessels have changed “nationality” by virtue of their fishing pattern.

There would be little point in the English Days at Sea Group meeting again because there would be precious little under the English control totals to manage or consult on.

The implications for PO membership and quota management are potentially profound but have, as far as we know, been ignored. It would be entirely consistent with this approach that vessels considered to follow a “Scottish fishing pattern”, and therefore assigned “Scottish nationality” would have to be members of a Scottish producer organisation.

Ultimately this would open the door to Scottish administrative control over the operation of our vessels, without the safeguards against discrimination, intended or unintended, that vessels from other member states are sheltered from, by virtue of the CFP.

Within months of the current “Tech Con” Regulation (EC 750/98) coming into force in 1998, it was recognised that it was not fit for purpose. Amendments to patch the holes in the new legislative package were quickly adopted shortly afterwards and the list of these has grown longer in subsequent years. Additional technical rules associated with specific recovery programmes have also been introduced in parallel without proper coordination with the existing core Technical Regulation. As time has passed, the inconsistencies within the Regulation and contradictions with other EU fisheries regulations have mounted.

A New Regulation?

Extensive consultations were held around 2009 on a replacement Tech Con Regulation that would consolidate the original Regulation, its amendments, and all the new rules affecting gear selectivity and net geometry, such as those contained in the various pieces of cod recovery legislation.

Simplification of this, one of the most complex parts of the CFP, was also an important part of this new initiative. However after floundering for a while, the draft proposals were quietly shelved, leaving the fishing industry and fisheries enforcement authorities to struggle though. Only by applying a pragmatic approach to a hotchpotch of inconsistencies, has it been possible to apply any sort of technical conservation regime. The overall effect on this lack of coherence is evident in ICES assessment that over the period the average mesh size in use in the North Sea has decreased despite the increase for whitefish mesh size from 90mm to 120mm. This is because many vessels have been forced from the main whitefish fisheries into the smaller mesh nephrops fishery in response to stringent cod recovery measures. A senior enforcement figure in the UK recently voiced the view that the regulations at sea “were an absolute minefield”, for fishing vessel operators. At the same time, he expressed the opinion that the fishing industry, with few exceptions “was compliant” with the regulations. It is only fair to pay tribute to both fishermen and enforcement authorities for finding a reasonable way through the minefield of failed legislation.

The Commission, enforcement authorities, and certainly the fishing industry, all therefore recognise that the current rules are dysfunctional. One of the most glaring aspects of the 1998 rules is how far they are out of touch with the current preoccupation for reducing discards. The current rules requirevessels to discard if their catch does not accord with the preordained percentage species mix for the mesh size in use. These are the notorious catch composition rules that lie at the heart of 750/98 and it is difficult to see how they can be made to be consistent with minimising discards.

A New ‘Tech Con’ Regulation?

So, here is the challenge: how to apply a set of general technical conservation rules that deliver minimum requirements for selectivity to all vessels fishing in EU waters, irrespective of size or the characteristics of fishing area, without legislating to create discards or other perverse incentives, in a less complex way than is achieved currently, and that can be enforced in a proportionate and transparent way? And good luck on that one.

It is no surprise then that the new EU Technical Conservation Regulation has stalled, stuttered, been delayed, revised, delayed again and is currently intertwined with the CFP reform process.

The North West Waters RAC, at its recent meeting in Dublin, was updated by the Commission on its current thinking on a new technical conservation that would be adopted immediately after CFP reform and would be consistent and compatible with that reform. The presently favoured approach appears to be a hybrid between the current approach which lays down one size-fits -all blanket European technical rules, and the approach advocated by the RACs, which would include technical conservation as one of the features of fisheries management best dealt with delegated responsibilities and regional management .

The North Sea RAC and North West Waters RACs have both submitted advice that explains how improved selectivity could be achieved through sustainable fishing plans developed and applied by industry organisations within an overarching system of safeguards and guarantees; and through some form of regional management, in which technical measures could be tailored to the specifics of the fleets and fisheries in each area.

Much has to be done in this area of policy. The development of more selective gears that allow vessels to move towards catching and landing their target species and sizes, whilst leaving behind everything else, hhas come a fair way and undoubtedly will develop further. Often however, it is not the technical issues involved but blunt, top-down, regulatory constraints that generate perverse outcomes that pose the most intractable problem. It is the precise balance between prescription and delegated self-regulation that will determine whether the new regulation will mark a fundamental shift towards an effective technical conservation regime in EU waters. The danger is that the Commission, Council and European Parliament will, in the final analysis, be unable or unwilling to take their hands off the micromanagement levers. It is in the sphere of technical measures that the need for a transfer of responsibilities to the regions, and to approved industry organisations, is at its most acute but only time will tell whether the European institutions are ready to move in this direction.

The “ultra-mixed” demersal fishery, with landings and earnings dependent on around 40 species, caught with eight or nine different fishing methods, by fleets from five or six member states, means that management approaches focused on only one or two species, or one or two fleets, are not likely to deliver sustainable or profitable fisheries. This has been one of the main reasons why the Celtic sea has to date remained clear of the EU Cod Recovery Zone and the EU Cod Management Plan, despite repeated attempts by the Commission to extend them to this part of Area VII.

The regional advisory council has provided a platform where the principal stakeholders in the different member states can work with fisheries scientists on the development of a plan tailored to the specifics of these highly mixed fisheries. The prize of a well-founded long term management plan developed with the close involvement of the fishing industry would be well worth achieving, not least because it would bring a degree of stability to the management regime ; vessel operators would no longer constantly have to worry whether the next Council of Ministers is going to bring forward yet another raft of poorly-thought through and inappropriate measures.

The Commission also puts store in the development of a long term plan for the Celtic Sea and at the most recent meeting of the RAC in Dublin, offered financial, data and logistical support for the RACs work in this area. The RAC will be taking up this offer and is preparing a note on the assistance required.

Foundations

Very positive ICES advice for 2011, which confirms strong recruitment in the cod, haddock and whiting fisheries, provides a welcome and solid foundation for the management plan. Life is always easier when the signs are pointing in the right direction and the key trends in many of the Celtic Sea stocks – reduced fishing mortality and increasing biomass – have been moving in the right directions for some time now. Part of this will be related to the usual cycles of nature but in part, it is likely to reflect management measures taken in the recent past, notably the reduction in the capacity of the fleets and the spawning closure on the Trevose bank. Decommissioning schemes in France, the UK, Ireland and Belgium have all contributed to a significant reduction in the vessels prosecuting the Celtic Sea fisheries.

Challenges

All this is not to say that the Celtic Sea demersal fisheries and the development of a long term management plan do not face challenges. The most immediate of these is the misalignment of the current TAC for cod with the amount of cod on the grounds. Only an urgent mid-year increase in the TAC can avoid the threat of a huge increase in discarded cod. At the same time it is foreseeable that will be extreme pressure for increased selectivity in these fisheries to ensure that the increased abundance doesn’t just end up as increased discards. Getting the right balance between selectivity and landings will be a priority for this autumn as well as ensuring that the right measures are applied for the right fleets and gears.

But even in the longer term management in mixed fisheries is never easy; apparently straightforward blanket measures such as restricting time at sea have a tendency to backfire. It is for this reason the NWWRAC is planning along with the North Sea RAC, a major conference on exploitation in mixed fisheries that will bring together world class experts on mixed fisheries, fishermen and fishing vessel operators and fisheries managers. The outcome of these discussions will be invaluable in informing the working group tasked with developing the management plan for the demersal fisheries in the Celtic Sea. The type of issues that will be addressed during the conference, and during the development of the long term management plan, are likely to include:

• Inextricably mixed stocks
• Sequential targeting within a single trip
• ICES work to date on mixed fisheries
• Avoidance plans
• Gear selectivity
• Spatial temporal measures
• Discards in mixed fisheries
• Economic driver stocks and the rest (Main TACs + “Norway Others” type approach
• “Choke” stocks
• MSY in mixed species fisheries
• LTMP trade-offs
• Catch composition rules

The difference between the long term management plans that have been adopted at EU level to date and the type of draft plan currently worked on by the RAC is the latter’s emphasis on a balance between biology/environment and economics and its commitment to an evolution towards its objectives. It is worthy of note that when making TAC recommendations if there is a management plan, the Commission will follow the provisions of the plan without recourse to its more extreme and controversial approaches. The aim will be to agree and adopt a management plan that will deliver long term stability, sustainability and profitability.

The National Federation of Fishermen’s Organisations is furious that a secret agreement between Defra and the devolved administrations will hand over control of parts of the English, and Northern Irish fleets to Marine Scotland, if they operate what is deemed to be a “Scottish fishing pattern”.

“We are incredulous that such a move is even being contemplated”, said Arnold Locker, Chairman of the NFFO.

“Our vessels, many of which have been forced to operate from Scottish ports because of days-at-sea restrictions and quota constraints, will now, if this agreement is allowed to come into force, be forcibly reassigned to Scottish administration, despite the fact that their ownership lies in England, their crews are English, their whole history and affiliations are English, and their administration has been in English ports. The Northern Ireland fleet will be in exactly the same position.”

“What is disgraceful is that our quotas and effort will be reassigned to Scotland and we will have absolutely no leverage whatsoever with marine Scotland how those allocations will be managed in future. We will have been disenfranchised. Can you imagine how much attention an Edinburgh administration will pay to our interests?”

“We would be in a much stronger position if we were French or Belgian or Irish. Then EU anti-discrimination rules would provide us with some protection. As it is because we are members of the same member state, these rules don’t apply.”

“What will the position be for vessels that operate in Scottish waters for part of the year? Will they continually have to change port of administration? We don’t know because there has been no proper dialogue on this profoundly important issue.”

“The unintended consequences that could flow from this half-baked decision could be profound. We could see our vessels affected by management measures that are discriminatory in effect. It is all the more outrageous that it is being pushed through without proper consultation with the people who would be affected by it. Because this is deemed to be a government-to-government agreement, we have not had sight and will not have sight of the new concordat, until it is signed, and probably not even then.”

“The driver for all of this is a handful of vessels which have changed administration to avoid the consequences of devolved decisions – for example the English under-10m licence cap. But there is a simple solution to that problem: make transfers between administrations contingent on agreement by both the departing and receiving administrations.”

“A request to meet the Minister to discuss the implications of this bizarre abrogation of duty has been refused and we are therefore considering all of our options. What is certain is that we will not be going meekly like lambs to the slaughter.”