Real Time and Area Closures

Cod avoidance measures such as real time closures and the use of highly selective gear, allow vessels to “buy-back” at least some of the 25% cut in days at sea imposed at the last December Council. Real time closures were trialled last year by the Scottish Executive and have been applied more extensively this year.

Discussions between the NFFO, Defra and MFA have centred on how to introduce a workable system of closures that would allow a days buy-back, tailored to conditions in English waters, with the least disruption to fishing operations and vessel viability.

Whilst supporting the use of real time closures as an alternative to blunt and largely ineffectual methods such as effort control, the Federation has been concerned to:

• Limit the size of closed areas to ensure that the displaced fleets have viable alternative fishing opportunities
• Limit the number of closed areas in any single ICES square
• Place a cap on the number of closures at any one time
• Ensure that the criteria for triggering a closure are fair and reasonable
• Ensure particular protection for vessels operating within the 12 mile zone, given their generally limited range and economic vulnerability
• Provide clear exemptions for scallopers, potters and pelagic vessels which do not catch cod and which therefore should not be prevented from fishing within closed areas
• Ensure that there is clear advice on when and where closures have been applied

In June the MFA applied 9 closed areas in the central and southern North Sea. These closures were based on 2008 catch data which provided an indication of where the most dense concentrations of cod might be found:

• These area closures will be review monthly and replaced with more relevant areas depending on the data which shows areas in which historically (2008) there have been high concentrations of cod.
• A system of real time closures will run in parallel to the area closures based on historical catch data
• If a real time closure is triggered by logbook information / boardings by the Navy, in an area adjacent to an existing closed area then the existing closed area will be removed.
• Inside the 12 mile limit the closures will be 20 square miles in size rather than the 50 square miles that applies outside 12 miles
• Real time closures will apply from the date that they are triggered until the end of that calendar month
• Inside the 12 mile limit economic impact zones will be applied if it is deemed that the closures would be too disruptive to the local fleets
• The closures will apply to the central and southern North Sea and the Eastern English Channel. The large seasonal closure in the Irish Sea has so far precluded consideration of RTCs in the Irish Sea, not least because it is already a relatively small, restricted, stretch of water

An important context for these discussions is the ongoing negotiations between EU and Norway on a mandatory Real Time Closure system for the North Sea. If agreement is reached this could apply from 1st September 2009. The NFFO is lobbying these talks intensively to ensure that the new measures are reasonable.

It is has been clear for some time that Defra is determined to press ahead with a consultation on a suite of shellfish conservation measures, including some form of effort control, possibly including pot limitations.

The Federation has agreed that it is sensible to apply conservation measures when stocks are reasonably buoyant, rather than waiting until there are problems and remedial measures are more difficult to absorb. However it is also important to avoid rushing into poorly thought-through measures that can do more harm than good in conservation terms and have a serious impact.

One of the more obvious features of our crab and lobster fisheries is strong regional differences as well as inshore/offshore variations. The Federation therefore used the meeting to emphasise that the regulatory impact assessment, which by law must accompany the consultation, should be both thorough and comprehensive and should take account of rather than disguise regional differences. A measure that will work well and be acceptable in one area may be wholly inappropriate for another area. Variations in seabed characteristics, different biological patterns as well as different fishing gears and fishing strategies can all be significant.

The Federation has agreed to work with the Scottish Fishermen’s Federation and shellfish interests in the republic of Ireland on a project to clarify the options available to safeguard crab stocks for the future whist ensuring a reasonable return for fishermen. Oversupply has been a particular problem facing the crab market in recent years.

European Policy Centre – Brussels 16th June 2009

Commissioner, Ladies and Gentlemen, Good Morning.

Reform of the Common Fisheries Policy

My task is to provide a perspective on the reform of the Common Fisheries Policy specifically from a fishing industry perspective.

My view is that the Green Paper will, in time, come to be seen as a landmark document. It marks a turning-point where the European Union at least started to break with the highly-centralised, command and control model of governance in fisheries that, let’s be honest, has brought the CFP and the European Union into some disrepute.

Perhaps the tipping point however, was before this: in the highly critical Court of Auditor’s report. This report signalled that the CFP was, in effect, dysfunctional. It was an uncomfortable, even damning, report that revealed, to a general audience, that the costs of managing European fisheries outweighs the revenue generated by the fishing industry It is this irrationality that ensures that change will come. This will be the driver; even more so as public finances have to deal with the financial consequences of the recession.

The Commission’s response to that report I think is illustrative of the dilemma of the CFP as a whole: In the short term, in its moves to reinforce the Control Regulation, the Commission has, defensively, reached for the familiar armoury of command and control instruments: tighter central control here; more stringent measures there. This certainly gives the impression of action and dealing with the problem, but our experience tells us that this approach simply perpetuates the central features of the CFP (remoteness, blunt measures) that have failed and require reform.

On the other hand, beyond immediate reactions to short term pressures and very encouragingly, the Green Paper contains the seeds of an approach that if nourished could lead to a radical and positive transformation of the CFP.

The essential ingredients of a reformed CFP have, in truth been around for some time – a decentralisation and rescaling of the CFP: a transfer of decision making responsibilities (within an overarching framework of principles and standards) from the centre to the regions and to the fishing industry itself. These ideas have been around for a while- but it is the Court of Auditors report that ensures that this time these ideas will have momentum.So what will the reformed CFP look like?

The short answer is, of course, that we don’t know because the new CFP will emerge out of the Commission’s proposal, and the negotiations and decisions by the Commission, Council of Ministers and perhaps the European Parliament, over the next 12 or 18 months. Certainly, this is not a great deal of time to define and refine the institutional arrangements that will replace the present decision making process. We need to make good use of that time.

In general terms however the CFP that I would like to see has three clear features:

• An overarching and guiding set of principles agreed and laid down at the broad European level. These should be clear principles and standards but emphatically, should avoid any hint of detailed prescription.
• A transfer of decision-making authority, within this framework, from the Commission and Council to regional management bodies on which the fishing industry will sit, along with representatives from the member states. The central role of this body will not be as a mini-Council of ministers but to define the terms of long term management plans.
• The most radical change will be the replacement of the current dysfunctional system micro-management, which at present often results in the creation of perverse incentives that systematically undermine management objectives. In its place fishing industry organisations –producer organisations or other collectivities of fishermen – would be given responsibility to produce and submit management plans for say 3 or 5 years. These would detail how the fishing enterprises within that group will operate sustainably and profitably, in conformity with the principles and standards laid down at European level.

Responsibility

It is worth focusing on this last feature because it will be the mechanism for delivering the transformation away from micro-management to a high degree of self management.

• Industry plans would be developed with the involvement of scientists, working collaboratively
• Each plan would require formal approval
• The plans would be subject to periodic audit
• The industry would be responsible for demonstrating that it is doing what it said it would do in its plan.

The present CFP suffers from a failure of governance: this alternative arrangement would allow us to scrap the incredibly large and complex set of detailed and frequently dysfunctional, technical rules that have grown up under the present CFP. It would involve a reversal of the burden of proof in fisheries.

Conclusion

There is much in the Green Paper that I haven’t touched on. For me the central issue of how to reform the CFP lies with the question of governance. The 2002 reform created the RACs, which have demonstrated a maturity and depth and ability of stakeholders to work together that have surpassed most expectations.

It is time now to move to the next stage: to replace the rather Victorian idea of a central, remote, all-powerful and all knowing authority figure by a model in which the fishing industry takes a high degree of responsibility for itself and its activities.

All of this involves the most profound process of change. Whilst our commitment to this change should not be in doubt, equally we should not underestimate the obstacles to its full achievement. Good ideas have often failed through poor implementation and it is therefore essential that during the next few months a great deal of thought is given to how the fishing industry can be supported during this transition and to make this transformation.

The Federation has written to the Chairman of the Migration Advisory Committee, which advises the Home Office and the UK Borders Agency, in the following terms:

Fishing Industry Labour Requirements: Shortage Occupation List

I write to alert the Migration Advisory Committee to the serious crewing difficulties faced by UK registered fishing vessels as a result of the Home Office and Border Agency’s tightening of their policies towards the migration to the UK of nationals from non-EEA countries.

Over a number of years, significant portions of the UK fishing industry have become dependent on crews from the Philippines to address a serious shortage of skilled fishermen. At base this shortage of crew has arisen from the fact that fishing is an arduous occupation, prosecuted in difficult physical conditions with extremely unsocial hours. To attract crew in these circumstances, it has always been necessary for fishing remuneration to offer a premium over what is on offer from broadly equivalent land based occupations. Over the last 15 years or so it has been increasingly difficult to provide this premium for a variety of factors of which the principal is the constraint on vessel earnings resulting from EU conservation measures, including limits on the quantities of fish each vessel is permitted to land. The result has been that vessels have faced severe crewing shortages to the extent that some vessels have been unable to go to sea, resulting in an overall loss of employment and reduction in economic activity.

Eastern European and Filipino crewmen have filled this gap and parts of the fishing industry are now highly dependent on this source of labour. It is important to appreciate that although they might not meet conventional standards of skill, in fact the majority of the Filipino crews employed are highly skilled fishermen.

The effect of tightening entry controls on this type of skilled labour will be to jeopardise the economic and operational viability of many vessels in the UK fleet.

Against this background we would make the following points:

• The criteria for categorising “skill” utilised by the Migration Advisory Committee is unjustifiably rigid and are not appropriate for the fishing industry where a different and in many ways unique, set of skills is recognised. This rigidity penalises the fishing industry which cannot function safely or economically without a full complement of crew who know what they are doing on board a fishing vessel.
• The Border Agency’s differentiation of the UK fleet into “inshore” and “deep-sea” categories fails to take into account the realities of fishing where many vessels operate on both sides of the 12 mile limit depending on season or where the best caches of fish can be located.
• The economic status of many parts of the fishing industry is fragile in the extreme. The fleet is particularly vulnerable to rising fuel costs because most fish is sold through the auction system and therefore increased costs cannot simply be passed on to the consumer. The recession has impacted seriously on the price of first hand sales of fish.
• As far as we can see, the employment of Filipino crews has had no displacement effect for indigenous labour. The fishing industry has suffered from a serious shortage of crew for a considerable period of time now and there is no sign that this has been changed by the recession.

• Although the conventional definitions of “skill” are problematic when applied to the fishing industry, there is a strong case for including fishing on the shortage occupation lists for the United Kingdom.

Against this background we would ask that you examine more deeply the impact of current Home Office rules on immigration of Filipino fishermen to the UK to work on UK registered fishing vessels of all types. We hope that it will be possible to put some kind of dispensation into effect before irreparable harm in done to important parts of the UK fleet.

Those questions are:

• Do journalists sensationalise?
• Do the media exaggerate?

Once you have answered those two questions for yourself, you will be in a better position to understand the media convulsions that are currently gripping the press over fishing and collapsing fish stocks.

You would have to be pretty myopic to believe that there are no problems associated with the management of European and World fisheries but the huge gulf between the media’s apocalyptic visions of collapsing fish stocks and the more prosaic truth is simply vast.

The “facts” as reported in the Times today:

• “80% of EU fisheries are fully exploited or overexploited.” But conflating “fully-exploited” and “over-exploited” is a sleight of hand and it is used because it conveys the impression is of impending catastrophe. As a matter of fact, the current aim of fisheries managers is to achieve maximum sustainable yield and when that is achieved all fisheries will be “fully exploited”.
• Only 7 out of the 47 stocks around the UK are in a healthy state. Apart from the fact that there are many more stocks than 47 exploited around the UK, what does “healthy” mean in this context? It could mean “sub-optimal” and we would agree but the clear intention is to add to the narrative of doom and despair.

An alternative narrative, underpinned by verifiable fisheries science, could emphasise a different array of facts:

• North Sea cod is now showing strong signs of recovery and has responded well to management measures and improved recruitment
• UK fishermen are working collaboratively with fisheries scientists to improve the quality of scientific data and means of harvesting fish stocks sustainably
• The Newfoundland cod fisheries are at last showing signs of recovery
• The European Commission has published a Green Paper in which it proposes a radical decentralisation of the Common Fisheries Policy, opening the way for much more responsive and flexible fisheries management in the future.
• Over the last five years fishermen from many different EU countries have overcome old enmities and mistrust to work collaboratively with scientists and environmentalists in the ground-breaking regional advisory councils.

This narrative will never get the coverage of the doomsayers because measured, balanced, careful, well-researched will lose out to sensationalist, cataclysmic and shallow every time.

Take a bow Charles Clover (Telegraph) and Frank Pope (Times).

The letter follows comments made by the Minister (FN 29th May) on the obstacles to reopening the EC cod recovery plan.

“Effort Control is an elaborate, costly but ultimately bankrupt approach to cod recovery”, said Davy Hill, Chairman of the National Federation of Fishermen’s Organisations. “It has been deployed because there is nothing else left in the Commission’s command and control armoury. Its primary advantage is that gives a superficial impression of dealing with the issue when the spotlight is on the Commission at the December Council”.

“In fact, an elementary understanding of economic behaviour suggests that restricting time at sea will intensify rather than reduce fishing pressure, at the same time that it increases the industry’s costs. As an industry we are suffering because the Commission hasn’t done its homework. A thorough impact assessment before the present cod recovery could have saved a great amount of heartache, along with a considerable amount of cod that is currently discarded as a result of the mismatch between abundance and the TAC.”

“Make no mistake – we are committed to cod recovery. The NFFO actively supports a range of cod avoidance measures all designed to minimise discards and speed recovery. These, in aggregate, and over time, will have a real positive impact. On the other hand, effort control at best is window dressing and at worst sets up perverse incentives that hamper and undermine cod recovery.

“Ongoing reductions in days at sea are not the way to mobilise the goodwill and industry commitment that, in my view, is a precondition for effective measures. We know there are those within the Commission that share this view but at present the diehards seem to still hold the whip hand. The forthcoming CFP reform will hopefully banish this tried and failed approach but in the meantime the Minister must do everything in his power to secure a change of direction”.

“We know that reopening the cod recovery plan will not be straightforward – for a start the Commission would have to acknowledge that its approach is fundamentally misguided, only a year after it was adopted. But the plain fact is that much more could be achieved in developing cod avoidance strategies if the yolk of effort control was lifted from our neck. And this volte face would be nothing compared to the changes suggested by the Commission itself in its CFP reform Green Paper.

“In every member state subject to days at sea constraint there is a mountain of evidence of the conservation and economic perversity of effort control. A case based on that evidence, put forward by a solid group of member states would create the political momentum for change. Our Minister should be leading that initiative”.

The purpose of the meeting was to discuss a range of issues arising from the MSC accreditation and logo scheme.

Within the NFFO a wide range of views on the MSC can be found, from those who have obtained MSC accreditation for their fisheries, or are undergoing pre-assessment, to those who are philosophically opposed to a private standard-setting and accreditation body. These views were reflected in the questions and points raised at the meeting.

There is little doubt that the MSC has momentum and has reached take-off speed in recent months. We were advised that it took nine years for the first 1000 fisheries products to come under the MSC logo and nine months for the next 1000.

The MSC has a worldwide staff of 50, 30 of whom are based in the London headquarters. Its £5million running costs are met 60% through grants and foundations and 30% -35% through the licence to use its logo.

Amongst the issues raised during the course of the meeting were:

• The extent to which the MSC changes anything? Does not the MSC just gather “low hanging fruit”? In other words, the fisheries which for a variety of reasons already operate in ways consistent with MSC standards and criteria. Single stock fisheries will for example, always hold an advantage over complex, multi-gear, multi-species, multi-jurisdiction fisheries. This does not of itself move fisheries towards sustainability.
• The cost of assessment, annual audits and reassessments is very high. Where assessments are undertaken for one party there is no mechanism for sharing that information, even when another party in the same fishery applies for accreditation. This duplication and unnecessary cost loading is difficult to defend.
• There is concern about the MSC’s governance structures insofar as the accreditation criteria and standards have been established with minimal industry input. Apart from the issue of accountability, there is little real scope for the industry to maintain an ongoing and continuous dialogue with the MSC.
• Can the MSC logo demonstrate a real market advantage across all the fisheries holding the MSC logo?
• The MSC logo could mislead the “ethical consumer” because it is exclusively fishery based and does not take into account, for example carbon emissions and air miles embedded in a fishery product.

A constructive debate was had on all these issues. The MSC specifically responded to the points made on accountability and governance by reference to its efforts to outreach to the industry and making every effort to understand the challenges fishery by fishery.

It was agreed that the issue of cost sharing would be taken back to the MSC for specific consideration.

SFF Chief Executive, Bertie Armstrong said, “The two federations are working to prepare a comprehensive and persuasive document that will be submitted to our Ministers at the earliest possible opportunity. Time is of the essence but it is also essential that that we present a watertight case. That is why we are addressing scientific, economic and political aspects of the issue. It is important for us to document how the original rationale for effort control – overquota landings- has been superseded and that effort is no real answer to the secondary rational – discards”.

NFFO Chairman Davy Hill said, “It is because we are committed to the recovery of cod stocks that we must spell out how the Commission and the Council have taken a wrong turning and that viable alternatives are available. Effort control as it progressively bites has the perverse effect of intensifying fishing activity and can de-motivate fishermen from the kind of initiative that delivers real cod avoidance”.Concerns over the consequences of diversion of fleet effort including impact on adjacent fisheries and safety issues will also be addressed in the joint paper.

“Effort control was a straw clutched at by a failing system without any serious analysis of what it would mean in practice. It was the product of an over-centralised system that the Commission now acknowledges, in its Green Paper, is badly in need of reform. Albeit belatedly, the problems caused by the implementation of the effort regime for both cod recovery and the economics of the fleet must be addressed and our paper attempts to do just that”, said Davy Hill.

We are sad to have to record the death of John Taylor, a member of the NFFO Executive Committee and inshore fisherman from Newbiggin by the Sea.

John, who died after a long illness, bravely borne, was quietly spoken but a dogged defender of fellow fishermen’s interests. He sacrificed time and effort to serve on the NFFO’s Salmon Committee and Shellfish Committee and only missed Executive Committee meetings during the all- important salmon season.

He will be sadly missed.

John’s family have asked that donations be channelled to Cancer Research UK through:-

Gary Taylor

C/o 23 Prospect Place

Newbiggin by the Sea

NE64 6DN

From the outset the NFFO stressed that, under the Scotland Act, Edinburgh simply didn’t have the legal authority to unilaterally set quota transfer rules and separate Scottish economic link conditions, not least because these would affect vessels not under Scottish jurisdiction.

If introduced, the proposed measures would also have added a further layer of restrictive measures on an industry already sagging at the knees under existing legislation. Add to that the proposals’ distinctly lukewarm reception in Scotland, and Defra’s provision of an escape route for any vessel defined as “Scottish” who wanted to reregister in England, taking their FQA units with them, and it was only a matter of time before the Scottish administration would have to find a way of extracting itself from the tree that it had climbed into.

The legality of the moratorium on the transfer of licenses and quotas out of Scotland, which had never been recognised as legitimate by Defra, became increasingly shaky as time moved on.

Against this background, the announcement that the Scottish administration will join 4-way talks with the UK fisheries administrations on the future direction of the UK quota and fishing vessel licensing, is very good news and hopefully, signals a return to a constructive, inclusive approach. The imminent reform of the CFP and the overriding need for a clear, unambiguous UK negotiating line in those talks is another reason why it was critically important to put this issue behind us.

In fact, aside from the proposal to put a “tartan tag” on quota currently attached to vessels defined as “Scottish”, there was much of interest in the Scottish proposals. Shorn of the politically driven attempt to apply a regional economic link, the proposals contained a number of sensible, pragmatic suggestions well worth discussing within the context of a UK review of the quota and licensing system. It is hoped that these will now become the focus of the discussions between administrations and with the industry.

The meeting will be held in the NFFO’s York offices on Thursday 18th June at 10.30 am.

As always, the Executive Committee meeting is open to any NFFO member who wishes to attend as an observer and to contribute to the discussions, subject to the Chairman’s discretion.

The meeting will include the 2009 Buckland Lecture, which this year will be given by Dr David Righton from CEFAS. The title of the lecture is “From Hatching to Catching: a modern understanding of a year in the life of cod”.

Some members of the Executive Committee, in the context of the ICES benchmark meetings in Copenhagen, have had the opportunity to preview the electronic tagging work on which much of the lecture is based and found it fascinating, especially in relation to migration patterns and changing positions of cod in the water column.

An agenda and support papers for the meeting will be circulated in due course.

There are signs that the arguments put forward by the NFFO, Cornish Fish Producers’ Organisation along with our allies in France and Ireland, have persuaded the Commission that it would be a mistake to include the Celtic Sea in the Cod Recovery Plan – with associated inclusion in the days at sea regime. At a recent meeting of the North West Waters Regional Advisory Council held in Paris, Commission officials indicated that the case put forward – that the ultra-mixed fisheries that characterise of Celtic sea should not be managed through a blunt instrument like effort control – had been persuasive and that the goal of including the Celtic sea in the Cod Recovery Plan from 1st January 2010 had been dropped .

This is an important recognition that the Celtic sea should not be shoehorned into the cod recovery plan but that a more tailored approach is required. The NFFO and the CFPO have been working with the European Association of Fish Producers’ and the NWWRAC to develop an alternative approach since moves to include the Celtic sea in the Cod Recovery Plan when it was adopted by the Council of Ministers in November were fought off.

It is important to continue this work as the Commission indicated that it will now consider cod recovery measures in the Celtic sea as part of a review of the Western Waters Effort Regime, which has been in place since the late 1990s. A package of measures, including the Trevose seasonal closure, improved selectivity and capacity and effort caps are under consideration by an industry working group and a meeting with scientists will be held in May or early June to progress the initiative.

This process is happening at a time when there is a growth in other competing interests in the marine environment, notably with the expansion of offshore wind farms. Other sectors as well as conservation interests are therefore laying their claim to marine space that was once the sole provenance of the fishing industry.

A NFFO delegation attended a recent workshop organised by Defra to define the social and economic information needed for the government’s Marine Conservation Zone planning process. The meeting heard that while fixed infrastructure such as oil and gas is well defined, data on mobile activities such as fishing is poorly represented. The workshop was attended by NFFO’s Chairman Davy Hill, John Butterwith, Ned Clarke and Dale Rodmell.

Although the NFFO has reservations over the potential misuse of information on fishing activity, and is working to ensure that all data is subject to careful interpretation in conjunction with the industry, there are serious dangers of losing access to key fishing grounds if we cannot demonstrate these through detailed chart information. If large parts of the fleet are not to be simply ignored in the marine planning process, the industry must grasp the nettle of this issue and be prepared to lay down its own claim of existence and importance.

The fishing industry has had a poor history of contributing information on its whereabouts only for it to be used against it. The rushed and ultimately counterproductive North Sea seasonal cod closure was based upon a flawed process of simply identifying where the fleet fished before banning it from the prime area, and more recently the Lyme Bay Marine Protected Area debacle certainly has not helped to inspire confidence. We know from these examples how not to do it and the Federation is pressing for a better approach in which fishermen have a voice.

For those vessels over 15metres it is now no longer a question of whether skippers wish to provide detailed information as this is collected automatically through the VMS system. For vessels under 15metres information is dependent upon landing declarations and logbook data. The problem with such data for marine spatial planning purposes is that it is mainly only available referenced to ICES statistical rectangles, which is a poor definition for spatial planning purposes. A recent project completed by ABPmer for COWRIE (Collaborative Offshore Wind Research Into The Environment) to assemble spatial fisheries value layers and is the most advanced attempt undertaken to date using this existing available data, but it also highlights the limitations in this data that the Federation warns must be taken into account in using such outputs in marine planning processes (see report on COWRIE website). In addition, such information on its own does not directly account for the effects of displacement which ultimately is the core issue for the industry at the heart of current marine planning processes.

Access issues are going to be one of the major challenges for the fishing industry in the near future and the Federation is helping to shape the industry’s response to this threat. This will include undertaking mapping work as part of the Federation’s ports visits programme (see related article).

It takes the form of a list of do’s and don’ts:

Do’s

• Begin with a trite and cataclysmic headline: “Has Cod Had its Chips?” or “Who Ate All the Fish?” are good examples of the genre. A question mark is good because it avoids the need to provide evidence to support puerile assertions
• Make reference to football fields and Boeing aircraft when describing the nets used by the UK fleet. There is no need to qualify the image by indicating that only a handful of UK vessels use nets that come remotely close to this sort of description and they are exclusively employed by the pelagic industry, which these days, is generally regarded as being a model of efficiency and sustainable fishing
• Refer to Professor Calum Roberts and journalist Charles Clover as authorities in the field. There is no need to suggest that the former is regarded by most serious fisheries scientists as a zealot with a highly selective approach to the evidence advanced for his assertions.
• Generalize with abandon. The prize in the category of meaningless over-extrapolation goes to Boris Worm of Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, who claims that all commercial fish stocks will collapse by 2048
• It is important if possible, not to cloud the picture portrayed of unalloyed gloom, environmental irresponsibility and illegality with too many examples of cooperation between fishermen and scientists in designing effective conservation measures
• Import any number of unsupported assertions, for example: “In Europe, 50% of the cod we eat has been caught illegally”. The authorities in Iceland and Norway where most of our cod comes from (as it always has) will be surprised to hear this as their management regimes are usually held up as exemplorary
• Hold up Marine Protected Areas, not just as a means to protect biodiversity but as a panacea that will rebuild fish stocks irrespective of species and circumstances, despite the evidence that only relatively sedentary species like lobster and scallops or tropical reef fish respond in the way suggested. In examples like St Georges Bank where more mobile species like cod and haddock have been rebuilt, it is important not to confuse the reader by suggesting that a panoply of other measures have also been in place and are likely to have had at least as significant a role in rebuilding the stocks

Don’ts

• Don’t make reference to the 67% reduction in fishing effort on North Sea cod since 2001; especially don’t make reference to the scrapping schemes that have decommissioned large parts of the fishing fleets in the UK, Denmark, Belgium, Ireland which have contributed to the drastic reduction in fishing pressure
• There is really no need to refer to the rapid rebuilding of the cod stock in the North Sea, partly in response to management measures, partly due to improved recruitment
• Do not discuss the battery of cod recovery measures introduced since 1999 which include improved gear selectivity, strengthened landing controls, closed areas, days at sea restrictions, highly restrictive quotas, and designated ports
• Only refer to the fisheries science partnerships where fishermen and scientists work collaboratively to improve the quality of fish stock assessments if it can be done in a way that suggests these initiatives corrupt the independence and impartiality of the scientists
• Certainly do not suggest that an element in the decline in cod stocks in community waters in the late 1990s may be in part related to a “regime shift” linked to changes in the availability of certain types of plankton at critical stages in the life cycle. Better to concentrate on greedy, short-sighted and irresponsible fishermen.
• Don’t mention the number of vessels in the UK fleet that have signed up for the Seafish Responsible Fishing Scheme
• Ignore fishing industry initiatives such as the Trevose seasonal closure, cod avoidance plans, industry led real-time closures, square mesh panels, benthos release panels, and a hundred other examples where the industry has made real progress towards conservation objectives
• Ignore the Regional Advisory Councils where the fishing industry works along with scientists, environmentalists, and other stakeholders to provide the European Commission and member states with coherent, evidence-based advice on how to improve what is recognised as a highly complex but over-centralised and unwieldy management regime
• Above all make no reference to the fact that fishing is an arduous occupation, pursued in a demanding physical environment where fishermen strive to make a livelihood, within a sub-optimal management regime in need of reform

Hopefully this checklist will provide a useful basis for any number of articles by lazy journalists who can’t be bothered to investigate the realities of the fishing industry. The other kind of journalists are welcome to call the NFFO on 0044 0 (1)904 635430

A paper submitted by the Federation and discussed by the Irish Sea Working Group, has now been approved by the Executive Committee.

The ideas in the paper – on how to improve the quality of the ICES fish stock assessments in the Irish Sea by increasing the level of fishing industry involvement – will now be part of a more general initiative to provide advice on how to improve the management of the Irish Sea fisheries.

The NFFO’s starting point was the dismal cycle of poor data, weak assessments, low TACs, leading to an alienated and resentful industry disengaged from the assessment process that characterised many of the Irish Sea fisheries. Breaking out of this downward spiral requires a fresh approach that recognises that fishermen hold important knowledge that can be used to strengthen assessments, and changes to the ICES system so that it can accommodate and use this new data.

This is pioneering work as the type of management plan envisaged by the RAC bears little relation to the set of harvest control rules, imposed from above, that currently pass for a management plan.

Based on lessons derived from important preparatory meetings over the last two years, which outlined a range of ground-rules on how to develop LTMPs, the RAC meeting will focus on economic viability of the fleet and environmental sustainability, as well as maintaining the nephrops fishery close to maximum sustainable yield.

Every fishery has its peculiarities and undoubtedly the problems faced by the nephrops fleet include the difficulty in assessing a stock where it is not easy to estimate the age of the animals and where the prawns live in single or muliti-occupancy burrows. The different sub-stocks and their vulnerability to different exploitation rates is another complexity. Helping to strengthen the assessments will undoubtedly be part of the management plan.

The aim of these initial series of meetings is to prepare a discussion document that will describe the current state of the fishery, where we would like the fishery to be in say 10 years time and a series of options for getting there. These options will then be thoroughly discussed with the vessel operators in the nephrops fishery before final advice on a definitive long term management plan for nephrops in the North Sea is agreed. The more comprehensive and robust the management plan is the greater will be the prospect of its adoption by the EC rather than the “management plan imposed from above” or crisis management that has characterised the North Sea demersal fisheries for the last 15 years.

This work is pioneering in another sense in that it provides a unique opportunity for a collaborative approach where the industry, scientists, fisheries economists can cooperate in the design and implementation of a plan. One of the central principles of the approach will be to avoid a plan that is imposed from outside in favour of one where successful implementation is achieved by ensuring that the fishing industry has been centrally involved in its design, aims and ways of achieving them.

The successful programme of port visits by NFFO Executive Committee member and known fishing industry figure Alan McCulla, is to continue. The new programme of visits for which a European Fishing Fund grant application will be made, will form the basis for a major NFFO initiative designed to give fishermen a stronger voice in siting offshore wind-farms and marine conservation zones.

The NFFO Executive Committee recently agreed that a continuation of the programme of port visits would provide the most effective way to protect areas of key fishing grounds from poor siting decisions by encouraging fishermen to prepare defensive charts of no-go areas for wind-farms and marine conservation zones. Recent NFFO meetings with Crown Estates, Natural England and JNCC have underlined the need for the industry to identify and defend the areas that are critical for fishing. The earlier in the process of site designation that this can be done, the greater the leverage that the fishing industry will be able to exert to defend livelihoods.

The Conservation bodies charged with identifying “ an ecologically coherent network” of marine conservation zones by 2012 and the Crown Estate which is in the middle of a massive expansion programme for offshore wind-farms, have emphasised the importance of working with the fishing industry to minimise their impact. Good intentions are one thing but having the information available to defend crucial fishing grounds is something else.

The plan is to use the port visits to encourage groups of local fishermen to provide information that will be incorporated into electronic charts; these will then be used to negotiate wind-farm and MCZs away from critical fishing areas as far as possible.

The port visits will also continue with their original purpose of strengthening the involvement of grass roots fishermen in management decisions. From all sides the wish to move away from a top down management system to one with a much greater participation by fishermen and vessel operators can be heard. But realising this in practice means that the communication channels between fishermen and decision-makers must be strong and effective. The port visits have been about creating or restoring those links and about encouraging fishermen to work through their local associations to make sure that their views are heard at national and EU level.

The present TAC and management arrangements for North Sea whiting do not reflect the realities on the ground and can only result in increased discards. That was the conclusion of a meeting of the NFFO’s North East Committee held recently in North Shields.

The Committee heard that ICES stock assessments are only now catching up with the reality that there is an abundance of whiting off the North East coast, although elsewhere in the North Sea there is evidence of a failure in recruitment over successive years, probably reflecting environmental changes. The result is that the whiting quota available to the North East fleet bears no relation to the whiting that will be hauled in the nets in this mixed fishery over the course of the year.

In recent years Norway and Denmark have not caught their whiting allocations but there has been resistance to making this quota available to the areas where it is needed. This is ironic, given Norway’s high minded approach to discards and that the overall result of inertia in the management system will be large scale quota-driven dumping of whiting over the course of this year.

The Committee agreed to prepare personal statements from a number of north east skippers describing their circumstances: low quotas, high quota leasing costs, loss of income, discarding that can only retard the rebuilding of the whiting biomass. The NFFO will ensure that the personal statements are made available to the ICES North Sea working group that meets on 6th May, as the first step in setting the TAC for 2010. In the meantime the Federation will press for in-year actions to reduce the scale of the problem.

The Committee discussed and adopted positions on a range of other issues, including days at sea restrictions, the Scottish Executive’s pressure for a separate quota system, the North Sea RAC’s work on a long term management plan for nephrops, the EC control regulation, under 10 meter issues, marine conservation zones, and crab and lobster regulation. The Committee also discussed the tagging scheme and logbooks for salmon catches, the Environment Agency’s Net Limitation Order and the potential for another licence buyout scheme.

The project is expected to be soon underway to cover the North Sea out to the UK’s Exclusive Economic Zone from the Scottish border to north of the Thames. Three further regional projects in the North West, South West and South East will complete the network for England. Separate initiatives will take place for Welsh and Scottish waters.

The meeting heard that a similar process took around sixty years to progress on land. This raises the question why there should be such a rush when the marine environment it is so poorly understood and coastal livelihood needs could stand to be neglected within the decision making process.

Undoubtedly the answer lies in the present political climate where high minded environmental concern, cultivated by sweeping statements about marine environmental decline, has translated into the apparent quick-fix cure we see in Marine Protected Area (MPA) policy. It would seem the solution rests on a simple doctrine – we don’t need to understand the complex interrelationships within the marine environment and between it and people’s livelihoods in order to act, and we must act in urgency before it is too late. The status of the UK’s marine environment and reality that the fishing fleet has reduced substantially in the last 10 – 15 years with a parallel reduction in pressure upon the marine environment appears to count for little in this frenetic debate.

The fishing industry has experienced many occasions when quick-fix solutions have faltered on a misconception of the marine environmental system or the realities of delivering policy on the ground. Early cod recovery closures for instance led to the diversion of effort onto fishing grounds where discarding was more prolific, did little to protect cod and resulted in a net negative conservation outcome.

The next question raised by MPA policy is who are we protecting the marine environment for? Many answers will no doubt be forthcoming with those seeing intrinsic value in the marine environment for its own sake, through to safeguarding resources for future generations. The NFFO sees this in terms of protecting and supporting sustainable marine livelihoods and coastal communities. If we are to achieve this, livelihood and community needs must be central to the MPA planning process. Unfortunately while Natural England claims the UK has some of the best marine environmental data of any country upon which to design MPAs, and computerised decision support systems are increasingly incorporating environmental concepts and information, the basis for integrating human factors in a systematic way is at present far weaker.

Fisheries have long suffered from a lack of systematic analysis of information on the state of the industry, particularly at a port level, despite the fact that basic data is collected routinely. A project led by the NFFO to prepare annual regional fisheries reports is working to address this problem and the federation is engaging to define socio-economic data needs for the MCZ planning process. There is no doubt that systematically applied data on fishing sensitivities will be crucial in planning an MCZ network that minimises the impacts to fleet operations. A failure to do so would likely lead to the disappearance of fleets and fishing communities on a location-by-location basis, or knock-on impacts from displacement of effort that could have negative conservation outcomes.

In some cases the developing design guidance for the UK’s MPA network could already have sealed this fate. Natura 2000 European Marine Sites established under the European Birds and Habitats Directives do not consider socio-economic factors in their designation and a further round of offshore and coastal sites is moving forward in the coming months. For MCZ designations, government site selection and network design guidance forthcoming later this year could yet be unacceptably restrictive in determining the proportion of MCZ designations that will not consider livelihood needs.

The fishing industry therefore enters into the planning process under the regional MCZ projects not yet knowing the extent to which government intends to consider livelihoods. The NFFO will continue to work to ensure that the fallout from this process does not sacrifice coastal communities for an idea founded on good intent but delivered in haste and blind to the unintended consequences that could result.

The Commission’s proposal for a new Control Regulation lowers the MoT to 5%, when there is abundant evidence from across Europe that it is wholly unrealistic to expect fishermen to estimate their catch on board to that level of accuracy.

Research has shown, for example, that a monkfish can lose up to 15% of its weight during the course of a trip, depending on the conditions. Ice melt, fish-room conditions and a host of other practicalities mean that a legal requirement to estimate the weight on board with a 5% margin of tolerance, and with criminal prosecution the consequence for failure, is tantamount to condemning fishermen in advance to a perpetual cycle of criminal prosecution. The Commission was told that:

• Such an approach was unreasonable, disproportionate and contrary to the notion of natural justice
• Member states would not enforce the rule consistently because it would clog their court systems or administrative penalty arrangements
• The issue demonstrated the remoteness of the Commission from the realities of operating a fishing vessel under a range of more or less difficult conditions
• The problem of accurate percentage estimates increases when small amounts of by-catch species are involved
• The Commission’s attitude on the margin of tolerance runs contrary to its stated aim of shifting the focus of enforcement from sea to the whole supply chain
• Catch estimates at sea play an insignificant role in the overall enforcement of fisheries regulation. The margin of tolerance is in danger of becoming a wholly cyclical and pointless paper exercise
• Catch estimates at sea may have once served a purpose, before landing declarations and then tighter controls on landing (including buyers and sellers’ registration) were introduced but it is hard now to see any real purpose to log-book estimates backed by criminal prosecution. Apart from alienating the industry, it undermines the role that fishing vessels could play in the provision of scientific data.

The Control Regulation is currently passing through the legislative process in Brussels and the European Parliament has made 294 proposed amendments, a record for any CFP regulation. This is significant because the Commission is taking more account of MEPs, in anticipation that the impasse in the adoption of the Lisbon Treaty will be soon resolved and co-decision making between the Council of Ministers and the Parliament will become the norm for most fisheries legislation.

The margin of tolerance issue is one of the most critical to be resolved before the Regulation is adopted. The meeting in Brussels was convened by Europeche after the NFFO had intervened at an earlier meeting in Rome to complain that the Commission did not appear to understand the MoT issue, despite it being raised at two major conferences in Peterhead and Brussels, by every regional advisory council and many member states.

Time will tell if our arguments have persuaded the Commission to abandon its ill informed, outdated and backward looking position.

It has also been agreed to work together on CFP reform in light of the publication of the Commission’s Green Paper.

At a recent meeting in Edinburgh, attended by senior officers of the two federations, a series of points of agreement were reached on how to extend and deepen collaboration and cooperation by the two federations.

SFF Chief Executive, Bertie Armstrong said after the meeting, “The federations are responding to growing disquiet in the ports over the viability of vessels under the severe constraints imposed by the days at sea regime. For almost two years we have worked strenuously to implement cod avoidance measures and we remain fully committed to the goal of building the cod biomass. But it now has to be faced that the level of reductions imposed by the cod recovery plan is actually counterproductive. It is alienating the very men whose support is necessary if we are to achieve our objective.”

NFFO Chairman Davy Hill said, “The immediate priority for the two federations is to ensure that the fleets survive this year, against the background of a punitive reduction in days and very difficult quayside prices. But we also have to work towards the circumstances in which we can remove effort control completely. It is an economically perverse instrument. The NFFO and SFF have achieved much when they have worked together in the past and we agreed to build the political, conservation and economic case for change.”

The two Federations:

• Agreed that the level of effort reductions under the new cod recovery plan are unmanageable and were introduced with no adequate assessment of their economic or regulatory impact
• Agreed that the kilowatt days regime that was supposed to be more flexible than the flat rate days at sea that it replaced, is intolerable with this level of reduction
• Agreed that UK fisheries ministers’ commitment to return to Brussels to renegotiate the effort package will have to be honoured, not least because the cod recovery plan dictates further reductions in subsequent years dependent on the conservation status of the cod stocks
• Agreed to work together on a robust case for ministers to renegotiate the effort regime.
• Agreed that effort control is wholly incompatible with a TAC and quota system and to work for the removal of the effort regime at the earliest opportunity. In the meantime, the two federations will resist any deepening, extension or institutionalisation of the effort regime.

CFP Reform

In light of the publication of the Commission’s Green Paper on the reform of the Common Fisheries Policy, the two federations agreed to work together on a joint approach.

“We recognise that CFP reform offers a mixture of threats and opportunities”, said Bertie Armstrong. “It is therefore essential that we maximize our influence. Working together, the two federations, by virtue of our membership and our international links can shape the forthcoming debate if we prepare strong, well argued, evidence-based positions.”

Davy Hill said, “If we are to move the CFP from the remote, top-down, command and control system that we currently labour under, towards one in which the industry has a central management role we have to make the case in the next few months. Clearly our case will be stronger at UK and EU level if the two federations collaborate.”

NFFO’s new Shellfish Committee Chairman Gary Hodgson is determined to push forward with a re-examination of brown crab and lobster conservation measures. He had urged NFFO members to get involved through its Regional and Shellfish Committees and to contribute to defining the Federation’s policy stance.

Beyond incremental increases in MLS for both stocks on a region-by-region basis, and a need in principle to address latent effort, the NFFO has taken an open view at this stage, opting for an evidence based approach that recognises the needs of different regional fleets.

Gary Hodgson said, “It is important that we do not make the same mistakes that occurred in the whitefish sector. Although shellfish stocks are generally good we need to be forward thinking in order to safeguard the industry’s long-term future.” He warned, however that, “Decisions must be supported by an adequate evidence base and not rushed through in a hurry. That requires an in-depth assessment of the options, including the consequences for each region, and this needs to be supported through the broad involvement of all parts of the industry.”

The Federation has been active in the UK Nations and Republic of Ireland Crab Interests forum that first convened last September and meets for its third meeting this Thursday (2nd April) in Dublin. In partnership with the SFF and other representative bodies, the NFFO has backed a proposal to examine the relative merits of alternative crab management measures. Pending backing from Seafish this will commence shortly. NFFO Members who wish to be involved in reviewing this policy should contact the NFFO’s York offices.