Cockle Fishery in the Kent & Essex IFCA: Questionnaire

The IFCA are interested in listening to the views of all interested stakeholders by asking them to complete a questionnaire and/or come talk to us on 20 and 21 October at the Thurrock Hotel, Aveley, Essex.

For a copy of the questionnaire go to our website https://www.kentandessex-ifca.gov.uk/news/review-of-the-management-of-cockle-fisheries-in-the-kent-and-essex-ifca-district

To book a slot to talk to Members of the IFCA on 20 or 21 October then go to Thames Estuary Cockle Fishery Management Review Tickets, Wed 20 Oct 2021 at 10:00 | Eventbrite

For more information on the proposed process and timeline click here

Fishing In the 1990s, under the PESCA European funding scheme, the local council replaced all the streetlights on Bridlington promenade with antique Victorian lamps. It could afford this because the town was deemed to be in a fisheries dependent area and therefore eligible for funding under the European scheme. This is an extreme, but sadly not untypical example of how well-intentioned funding streams can be diverted far from the people or groups that they are supposedly designed to help.

One particularly welcome part of the new UK Seafood Fund is the £24 million allocated to Fishing Industry Science Partnerships. Around half of this will go to the continue of the Fisheries Innovation Fund, but the remainder is allocated for Fisheries Science Partnerships. This is good news but, as ever, a good idea can be spoiled by poor implementation.

Fisheries Industry Science Partnerships

The NFFO can claim some credit for the focus of fisheries science partnerships, having argued passionately for funding to continue one of the most successful government initiatives in fisheries over the last two decades: the Defra/Cefas/Industry Fisheries Science Partnership.

The difficulty we now face is that the mechanism for distributing the circa £12 million through a competitive bidding process risks excluding many individual fishing vessel operators and only favouring research institutions, NGOs and the better organised parts of the fishing industry, who are geared up to deal with the complex public procurement bidding systems. Most individual fishing businesses have neither the time nor expertise to access the funding under this type of system.

Fisheries Science Partnership

The original FSP, established first in 2004, under pressure from the NFFO, ensured regional and sectoral equity by explicitly taking these factors into account. The FSP Steering Group made an effort to direct funding to areas and fleets who may have lost out in earlier rounds. Over time there was a balance and fairness.

At the heart of the original FSP lay several core principles:

• The scheme was designed to help answer issues raised by the industry itself
• Data gaps would be addressed in a scientifically valid way
• Fishing vessels would be employed to undertake the data gathering under scientific supervision.
• Results would be formally reported and disseminated
• A Steering Group with industry representation would ensure fairness and relevance in the selection of projects when these were oversubscribed (they were always oversubscribed)

The result was what was described in learned journals as “ground-breaking participatory fisheries research”.  In addition to the data and knowledge generated, strengthening stock assessments (and therefore better fisheries management) was the trust and cooperation that each FSP project generated between fisheries scientists and fishing vessel operators, that hadn’t previously existed. For more than a decade-and-a-half the FSP funded around 10 projects each year in all parts of the fleet and right across England and Wales, until eventually the budgets were cut from £1 million per year to a small fraction of that.

Concern

Our fear is that the new arrangements to allocate FSP projects through a competitive bidding system will retain the FSP title but not the fairness and relevance that lay at the heart of the original partnership. It would be tragic if this big political gesture of confidence in the future of the fishing industry only answered questions important to those outside the industry but excluded the very people it was designed to help.

There may still be time to safeguard the equity and relevance of the new FISP. The NFFO is in discussion with Defra about our concerns. The worry is that the giant and inflexible government procurement process and a system of competitive bidding will exclude many of the very people it is designed to help. That would be a waste and a missed opportunity.

The elegant lamps on Bridlington seafront stand in testimony to what can go wrong when good intentions are misdirected into futile gestures that fail to benefit the people intended.

Enter Greenpeace. An organisation that lost its founding purity decades ago and operates as an aggressive corporate body which competes in a crowded field with other better-connected NGOs and young upstarts like Extinction Rebellion. Greenpeace’s signature campaign mode is the spectacular publicity event. Not for them dialogue, evidence, shared objectives and cooperation. The body with peace in its title has spurned multiple offers for dialogue. Its preference is for identifying the splits within the industry into which it can pour its poison.

There are and always will be in our industry the gullible or the cynical who can see advantage in associating with the playground bully. Not for them concerns for the livelihoods or lives of other fishermen. They are prepared to line up with a criminal body which endangers the lives of other fishermen by dumping boulders on fishing grounds. That, for them, is an OK thing to do.

At a time when 38% of UK waters are designated as one kind or another of marine protected areas and offshore windfarms are planned to expand by at least a factor of four within the coming decade, with the potential to displace hundreds if not thousands of fishermen from their customary grounds, one would have thought the case was never stronger for industry unity. But no, Greenpeace have persuaded some that expelling midwater trawlers, whose gear never touches the bottom from MPAs should be a priority – simply because they are big.

It doesn’t take much imagination or insight to understand that these are false friends – who will turn on any fleet segment if it can generate publicity and donations. Every fishing gear has an environmental impact. We catch fish. That is our job. We do it to feed people.  Our task as an industry is to manage and minimise those impacts and to sustain livelihoods and communities at the same time. If we turn on each other, like any group, political party, or nation, we will go down.

All of this is not to deny that when large-scale, efficient, fishing capacity is deployed, management and monitoring must be robust if we are to maintain sustainable fisheries. There are concerns about what is happening in the Thames Estuary, where huge infrastructure projects have disturbed sediments in recent years. Many NFFO members have expressed concern over the rapid expansion of the fly-shooting fleet in the Channel. The inshore crab and lobster fisheries on the south-east coast have collapsed. Cod have moved north (but on the other hand, the biomass of North Sea plaice is above anything seen in the historic record). It is also worth remembering, in contrast to Greenpeace’s catastrophe narrative, that most of our stocks have been moving steadily in the right direction for almost two decades now. The point is that scapegoating one fleet segment does not amount to a coherent management strategy, or adequately address this complex of issues.

So, there is a choice to make. Sign up for the dubious charms of the divisive snake-oil salesmen or work with other fishers to make things better. The latter is not an easy road. It involves cooperation and compromise. It involves listening to the other side and finding a way through. It involves engaging with fisheries scientists and fisheries administrators on the detail of fisheries management. Above all it involves respect for other fishers whatever the size of vessel, home port or gear used. Inevitably, there are tensions and frictions. And strong individuals. And arguments.  But without that respect and the cooperation it generates, we are lost my friends, we are lost.

Andrew Pascoe

Fisherman and President of the National Federation of Fishermen’s Organisations

There is hope on both sides that it will be possible to avoid repeating the prolonged and torturous process that marked the 2021 negotiations. That initial set of negotiations, with the UK acting as an independent coastal state for the first time, and the ink barely dry on the TCA, were painfully slow and difficult. Covid restrictions also severely hampered the decision-making process. The aim for this year is to secure agreement by 10^th December.

ICES scientific recommendations for 2022 were published at the end of June and will provide the foundation for the talks and final decisions, but raw single species advice will have to be balanced with mixed fishery considerations, socio-economic concerns and overall coherence.

The talks will again take place within the provisions of the TCA, the Trade and Cooperation Agreement, famously signed by the UK and the EU on Christmas Eve last year. The intervening period has been turbulent and has witnessed border trade difficulties, a long delay in implementing a process for international quota swaps, enormous uncertainty about the future management of non-quota stocks, the first faltering steps of the Specialised Committee on Fisheries, and a slow realisation of the implications of what was agreed in the TCA. In the meantime, the UK has for the first time used its regulatory autonomy to increase the principal mesh size for all demersal vessels fishing in the Celtic Sea from 80mm to 100mm, as it begins the shift away from the Common Fisheries Policy, much of which has been kept as retained EU law to avoid a regulatory vacuum.

Norway and Faroes

The UK/EU negotiations are important but are only one set of talks within a complex matrix of negotiated decisions for 2022. Coastal states, like Norway, Faroes, Iceland, EU and UK will discuss TACs and quota shares for massive but highly migratory species like, mackerel, blue whiting and atlanto-scandian herring. Following Norway’s decision to award itself a hugely increased share of mackerel for 2021, these talks begin from a difficult place and have wide implications for other fisheries. Although TACs for jointly managed demersal species like cod, haddock and whiting, were set trilaterally by UK/Norway and EU, there was no reciprocal fisheries agreement between the UK and Norway for 2021, and therefore no access to fish in each other’s waters for this year. Whether this economically damaging failure will be repeated in 2022, will be central to this year’s negotiations. In this sense, all parts of the fisheries negotiations, pelagic, demersal, external waters are all interlinked and mutually dependent.

ICES Advice

Notwithstanding the political/jurisdictional complexities triggered by the UK’s departure from the EU, ICES advice will remain the foundation and reference point for the decisions ahead. The form and timing of the scientific advice can also be controversial. Volatility in the advice from one year to the next, as the scientists make up their minds, is a particular feature of this year’s recommendations. The emergence of ICES mixed fisheries advice so late in the year, zero-TAC advice for one species caught in a mixed-fishery configuration are not regarded by fisheries managers as particularly helpful. In the North Sea and Celtic Sea, cod, which as a species at its southernmost extent in our waters, is undergoing distributional shifts that raise fundamental questions about how to assess the stock and design appropriate management measures for the future. When North Sea cod faces a recommended TAC reduction in the region of 10%, whilst the recommendations for haddock and whiting, largely caught in the same fisheries, of increases 86% and 136% increases respectively, it is possible to glean an understanding of the management challenges ahead.

Landing Obligation

There is now a widespread but tacit understanding that the EU landings obligation was a huge, grandiose, failure. The big discard numbers in the North Sea, quoted ad nauseum, by discard campaigners related primarily to only two stocks – dab and plaice. The EU removed TAC status from dab – excluding it from the landing obligation; and plaice in the North Sea has both an enviable conservation status and justifies high survival exemptions in many fisheries. So, what was the landings obligation all about? There has been no resolution to the problem of chokes in mixed fisheries, other than temporary de minimis exemptions and the visibility of catches has decreased in many fisheries. The landing obligation wrecked the EU’s first tentative steps towards regionalisation and will go down in history as a classic and spectacular example of a failure of centralised, top-down, fisheries management.

Nevertheless, minimising discards to the extent possible, whilst maintaining economically viable fleets, will be an important factor on this year’s round of decisions.

Discards Policy

Despite the failure of the landing obligation, there is an ongoing and important challenge for the fishing industry and fisheries managers to reduce unwanted catch – both for stock conservation and industry reputational reasons. Fisheries management plans, as envisaged under the Fisheries Act 2020, may well prove to be the vehicle for more effective and sensitive discard reduction initiatives, but in the meantime, it makes no sense at all to force fishing vessels to discard perfectly good fish back into the sea because of quota limits or technical measures.

Some headway was made last year, led by the UK, in allowing some fleet sectors to land a higher proportion of unavoidable bycatch of seabass. Building on that welcome movement forward, whilst keeping an overall lid on fishing mortality, will be an important objective in the coming round of negotiations.

Because of its shape and size cod has always been a tricky species to select out without losing other marketable species but the combination of low TAC and quota shares that do not reflect fleet activity, discards remain a central management and industry problem that will feature large in this year’s negotiations. The problems are particularly acute in the North and Celtic Seas

NFFO

The Federation has been and will continue to be engaged in every aspect of the annual negotiations. In fact, arriving at TAC decisions is the culmination of a year-long (and sometimes longer) process involving:

• Feeding into the science, especially through the ICES benchmark process and dialogue with Cefas scientists during the year, as well as Fisheries/Science partnership projects
• Dialogue with Defra officials on issues of concern to the industry, negotiating principles and objectives
• Balancing short-term economic viability and long-term sustainability objectives
• Ensuring that decisions make biological and socio-economic sense at vessel level
• Highlighting inconsistencies and contradictions between different sets of rules
• Ensuring that every fleet sector on receives a hearing
• Ensuring that the English fleets get a fair hearing within the context of devolution, despite having no dedicated champion at ministerial level
• Highlighting the consequences of different policy decisions
• Resisting one-dimensional politically driven interventions
• Helping to formulate and fine-tune negotiating priorities and the allocation of scarce negotiating capital.

According to Defra:

“Fishing businesses across the UK will now have access to £24 million of investment to develop technology, trial new gear and support world-class research to improve the productivity and long-term sustainability of the industry.

The funding released by the Government to support better science and innovation projects is the first part of £100 million UK Seafood Fund designed to level up coastal communities across the UK. It will ensure industry is able to process more fish landed in the UK, and create more job opportunities across the supply chain. It will also upskill the workforce and train new entrants, as well as investing in technology to put the UK at the cutting edge of new safe and sustainable fishing methods. ”

Further information can be found on gov.uk, as well as on twitter.  Further detail on how to bid for funding is here: Fisheries Industry Science Partnerships scheme

The document sets out the programme of measures that will be implemented over the next six years to achieve or maintain Good Environmental Status for UK seas.

The updated UK Marine Strategy Part Three consultation document can be found and responded to here

The consultation closes on 29 November 2021.

The existing Size of Vessels Byelaw was introduced by Devon Sea Fisheries in 1996 and was itself developed from an even earlier (earlier than 1989) Size of Vessels Byelaw. This Byelaw is being formally reviewed by D&S IFCA, and a report was presented to D&S IFCA’s Byelaw and Permitting Sub-Committee on the 22^nd of July 2021 that set out weaknesses associated with it. The re-making of the Byelaw provides an opportunity to address the documented weaknesses.

See further information including questionnaire on the DSIFCA website.

The information-gathering exercise ends on Friday 24th September 2021.

The four rounds will be delivered by MMO on behalf of Defra under the £6.1 million Fisheries and Seafood Scheme (FaSS).

The rounds are as follows:

• Grants for projects that support businesses trading in Live Bivalve Molluscs (LBMs).
• Grants for projects that contribute towards protecting the marine environment.
• Grants for projects that deliver world class science and technological advancements.
• Grants for projects that support or enhance the recreational sea fishing sector.

All four funding rounds close for applications on 6 October 2021.

Further information

Guidance on how to apply

Further details here

There are some in the fishing industry whose trust in the Government has been irrevocably shattered. The fishing industry was given assurances from the top of government – the Prime Minister, senior cabinet ministers and Chief Negotiator himself, Lord Frost – that our industry would not be sold out in negotiations with Europe, as it had been by Edward Heath in 1973.

There was always a risk. Even when the fishing industry was used as the poster-child for Brexit, the NFFO paid for and distributed thousands of flags bearing the message: Fishing: No Sell-out.

In the event, on Christmas Eve 2020, another date that live in history for its infamy, fishing was sacrificed to secure a trade deal. The bald economic calculations laid waste to all the promises, assurances and commitments on fishing.

A few concessions on quota shares were made by the EU but these were miles away from what any self-respecting coastal state would consider fair, or consistent with its status under international law.

Under the terms of the TCA the UK didn’t even secure an exclusive 12 mile limit, something that most coastal states would automatically consider theirs by right, and essential for the sustainable management of their inshore fisheries . And is there anybody who truly believes that it will all be all right in 5 years time when the TCA access arrangements expire?

There is regulatory autonomy. This should allow us, over time, to diverge from the body of retained EU fisheries law – the CFP – and apply our own rules for operating in U.K. waters. These will apply to all fishing vessels irrespective of nationality. That is worth having and has the potential to be very significant over time.

The issue now is whether fishing, having lost our status as Brexit poster-child, has become a national embarrassment for the Government – a living symbol of failure to negotiate what is the UK’s by right and by international law of the sea. Will the government try to make amends for the way we have been treated, or seek to edge us off centre stage? The £100 million commitment made in the immediate aftermath of the TCA agreement suggests the former. The Government’s policy approach and insouciance towards the potential for displacement from marine protected areas and the expansion of offshore wind, suggest the latter.

Cooperation

The new Fisheries Act provides a framework for a new kind of fisheries policy – one in which the fishing industry is centrally involved in the design and implementation of fisheries management plans. Work is already under way, especially in the shellfish sector, where some of the elements of co-management can be seen at work in the Shellfish Industry Advisory Group and it’s important sub-groups covering crab/lobster, whelks and scallops. But will that cooperation survive if there is large scale displacement from customary fishing grounds with all the social and economic dislocation and unintended knock-on effects that implies?

This is another trust issue for the Government. Will fishing be treated fairly, carefully, and with respect, as an important component in this country’s food supply and for its export earnings and support for coastal communities? Or will there be further betrayals?

And then there is devolution; another sphere in which government concessions could come at our cost.

Annual fisheries agreements with Norway and Faeroes is a further area in which post-Brexit turbulence is manifest and where new equilibriums have yet to emerge.

We are about to enter negotiations for 2022, when all of these factors will be in play, along with the mother of all headaches on how to manage non-quota species. The Specialised Committee for Fisheries and annual negotiations will be of central importance but we have yet to see how this will function in practice. 

Political Landscape

This then is the broad political landscape for fishing after 8 months under the TCA. Through it all runs the core question of trust. As an industry we have little option but to make the best of it. The importance of working with our eyes open to the political currents and counter-currents has never been higher.

Evidence will be used to inform whether new management measures are required and if so, what form of response Defra might consider, to ensure the sustainability of scallop and shellfish fisheries.

The consultation closes on 30th August 2021.

Further information is available here.

The consultation closes on 30 August 2021.

Further information is available here.

The consultation runs from 26 July 2021 to 8 August 2021 and is on behalf of the four UKFAs.

Further details can be found here.

Defra is seeking views about the following proposals:

1. Limiting the selectivity device options to include only the most selective devices for Nephrops. These include the Seltra Panel and Sorting Grid, as per current gear options, as well as two new options under consideration; the Netgrid selectivity device and SepNep (both as legislated in the North Sea).
2. Prohibiting the use and carriage of strengthening bags. This measure will be applied to otter trawl and bottom seine vessels in the Celtic Sea from 5 September 2021; we are proposing to extend this measure to Nephrops-directed fisheries later in the year.
3. Increasing the catch composition threshold, which defines a Nephrops-directed fishery in the Celtic Sea, from 5% to either 15 or 30%.

For more information on the proposed changes and to share your views on the management of Nephrops-directed fisheries in UK waters of Celtic Sea, follow the link to the consultation survey on Citizen Space: https://consult.defra.gov.uk/marine-and-fisheries/nephrops-celtic-sea

Alternatively, you can contact: Nephrops.consultation@defra.gov.uk

The consultation on UK Celtic Sea Nephrops-directed fisheries technical measures launched on Friday 16 July and closes on Friday 13 August.

Relegation of Human Use Issues

Dale Rodmell, assistant chief executive, said: “This amounts to a deliberate narrowing of the options from the start, which is likely to lead to the selection of sites that are far more contentious than might otherwise be the case.  It also sets up the problems we have highlighted about marine protected areas (MPAs) all along – what is the government to do about displacing existing activities, including fishing communities?”

The government has stated that it will examine displacement from the selection of sites initially identified under its ecological criteria, but inevitably this will be an analysis of a set of already restricted options.

Dale Rodmell continued: “Marine planning should be about finding synergies between different marine uses and that is no more important than in our crowded seas. That’s what the Marine Policy Statement and Marine Plans are all about.  For reasons that make little practical sense, the government has yet again disregarded this and instead bought into the idea that when it comes to environmental protection it is ecology that is king and human use of the marine environment should be out of the picture, or of secondary importance.

It has not thought about what that means for planning decision-making.  Why would you from the start disregard half the evidence when scoping your options?  Why wouldn’t you look at the trade-offs of selecting areas from the point of view of both ecology and human use?  It is the playing out of a naive ideology that ultimately harms conservation and sustainable marine livelihoods.  It’s also an approach that would never be contemplated on land.”

Criteria Biased Against Fishing

While human use issues have been relegated in the search process, the ecological smorgasbord of criteria includes some that are likely to direct selections towards important fishing grounds including:

• Key life cycle stages of commercially important marine species, which will lead to the selection of sites on fishing grounds, where instead of the uncompromising approach of HPMAs, alternative targeted measures to protect those species could be employed.
• Habitats considered to be of importance to the long-term storage of carbon which includes mud habitats that are the focus of our most prolific prawn/langoustine fishing grounds, which therefore risk maximum displacement.  It is also an issue where the basic science on sediment disturbance and its contribution to carbon release into the atmosphere is as yet poorly understood (1) (despite the claims of a high-profile Nature paper (2) that used an extrapolation based on conjecture).
• Locations representing a relatively degraded ecosystem that will tend to bias to areas under heavy human use.

A More Coherent Approach

The NFFO consider that a more balanced approach would deliberately examine areas of least use and consider existing or likely MPA management measures in the existing blue belt network to see whether these areas could make good sites from an ecological perspective.

The original idea of HPMAs, first raised in the marine conservation zone site selection process, saw them as reference areas to be used as scientific controls for understanding human impact and ecological recovery.

From that perspective, whereas the original rushed process of directing stakeholder groups to select such sites over a few short weeks in 2011 was ultimately a failure, their application as part of a wider raft of existing site measures, where they may contribute to site-based adaptive management strategies, has a logical purpose.  Here it can involve stakeholder user groups for the relevant MPAs who have the site-level knowledge and understanding of impacts to inform their best use.

Ideology over Substance

Regrettably, the rational approach to HPMAs encompassed in their use as reference areas was lost following the Benyon review into HPMAs and now the government sees them principally as a means for recovering marine ecosystems.  MPA campaigning organisations regard the government’s intention to pilot HPMAs as the first step to something considerably greater.

But the problem with this is that the only way they can have any significant contribution to ecosystem recovery, or to blue carbon sequestration for that matter, is through scale.  Given that HPMAs by definition are uncompromising, with the vast majority of human uses being banned from the outset, this means that as they grow in size they rapidly result in unpalatable trade-offs in our increasingly crowded seas.

By failing to defend its own world-beating record on its existing “blue belt” against crass criticisms of “paper parks” and giving way to this much broader definition of HPMAs by yielding to the rewilding purists, the government has ensured that marine users and conservationists will remain on a collision course.

It is making the HPMA selection process especially contentious by inviting the nomination of sites by third parties based on its ecological criteria, without inviting the consideration of options from sea users who may be able to identify areas that take account of the trade-offs with human use considerations.

This is a far cry from other programmes under the same government, such as the Clean Catch UK initiative, which is all about bringing the conservation lobby, industry, science, and innovation together to work collaboratively to find solutions to fisheries bycatch that as far as possible work with the grain of sustainable marine use.

In comparison, this government’s approach to HPMAs is about pandering to the entitled and privileged few to enable them to impose their views and will on unsuspecting coastal communities in a game of winner takes all.

1. The disturbance of the seabed by trawling has several opposing mechanisms of impact on the benthic carbon budget and the net effect of these processes is presently highly uncertain due to complex interactions, see Legge, O. et al. 2020: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmars.2020.00143/full
2. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03371-z#change-history

The deadline for applications is 1 August 2021.

IFCAs seeking members include:

Northumberland IFCA

Three new general members are required who are willing to support NIFCA and positively embrace the challenges that new legislation and fishing plans will bring. Applications are welcome from all sectors but we especially welcome applications from those in the commercial and recreational fishing communities.

North Eastern IFCA

Require two general members and invite applications from all sectors but particularly encourage applications from commercial fishing operators with experience in working both static and mobile fishing gears on inshore grounds.

Kent & Essex IFCA

Welcome applications from anyone with a willingness to engage with the IFCA in their work in undertaking the management of fisheries within their district. In particular applications are encouraged from the recreational angling sector and active commercial fishermen.

Cornwall IFCA

Welcome applications from all sectors but to reflect the balance and needs of the IFCA would particularly welcome applicants with experience and knowledge of the recreational fishing and marine environment sector.

Southern IFCA

Welcomes applications from candidates with a scientific background within the marine environment and working knowledge of the IFCA district.

Further information and application forms are available here.

The survey asks to identify THREE issues and can be completed here:

https://hull.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/fisheries-horizon-scan

Open until 9^th July.

When he undertook his detailed vessel reviews for the pages of FN, he was as engaged with and enthusiastic about the small Northumbrian coble every bit as much as the latest pelagic trawler. The detailed information that he captured and conveyed was fascinating, especially to those who need the technical information to help make their own decisions. It is doubtful whether any other person was so well connected and so well respected across the whole UK fishing industry.

It was the word enthusiasm that most people who met David will recognise and associate with him. And from that enthusiasm came a deep knowledge which allowed him to be an effective editor of the industry’s trade newspaper.

Committed, immensely likeable and knowledgeable, David’s presence aboard the latest vessel, or on the quayside, or in the pages of Fishing News, will be sorely missed.

Our deep sympathies go to his wife and family.

Seabass measures can be found here.

News story on new fisheries technical measures can be found here.

Total Allowable Catches and Regulatory Autonomy

Total Allowable catches for jointly managed stocks have now been agreed as part of the deal but these only reflect the provisional determinations already set unilaterally by the UK in May. A formula within the TCA linked to the most recent ICES advice constrains the range within which autonomous quotas can be set.

It is in details like the conditions attached to particular TACs that the political trial of strength is visible. The UK’s determination to go its own way on fisheries (within the confines of the TCA) and the EU’s efforts to constrain divergence as much as possible, are apparent in the compromises made. The TCA requires the parties to work together on the management of shared stocks but also enshrines recognition that in the final analysis each party has the right to regulatory autonomy to manage the fisheries within its own respective zone.

The issues which have delayed reaching a deal until almost 6 months into the year to which it applies all relate to this fundamental tension.

https://www.nffo.org.uk/uk-eu-fisheries-agreement-for-2021/

Non-quota Stocks

The issue which reflects the terms of the TCA, but also throws up the most difficult management issues for the future, are the tonnage limits which will apply to catches of non-quota species like scallop, crab, red mullet, sardine, whelk, lemon sole and many others. The parties have fought themselves to a standstill and have now agreed that it is too late in the year to apply the tonnage limits. Designed as a cap to prevent the displacement onto stocks that are economically valuable but for which data is limited, the implementation of the tonnage limits will now be referred to the Specialised Committee on Fisheries (SCF). Get used to those initials because they will be where most bilateral fisheries management issues will now be addressed.

Seabass

The influence of regulatory autonomy is evident not only where the UK overtly adopts its own management measures (which will apply to all vessels operating within the UK EEZ), but also where the negotiation outcomes have been shaped by the new balance of power.

An example is in the agreed negotiation outcome on bass. Although this was an agreed common approach, it is one which shifts the conservation measures more towards the UK’s preference to allow more scope to land a higher proportion of unavoidable bycatch rather than discard them dead. This will not go far enough for those who are seeing an abundance of seabass in their local waters but does point to the fact that the UK is no longer a supplicant member state, easily corralled, by the Commission. 

Celtic Sea Technical Measures

The agreement for 2021 acknowledges that the UK will unilaterally apply strengthened selectivity measures in the Celtic Sea. There is a suspicion that the Commission is not unhappy with this development, as its own plans faced opposition from member states. The views of some member states may differ.

Mixed Fisheries Management

The annual agreement contains language on the future management of mixed fisheries which also points to UK influence and movement towards a more reality-based approach which recognizes the need for carefully balanced trade-offs, rather than one-size-fits-all CFP rigidity. This could represent a breakthrough after years of trying to fit zero-TAC advice to complex mixed fisheries situations. In truth, the EU routinely departed from zero TAC advice based on single stock assessments. We can see in the agreed record, though, the beginnings of a refreshing reality-based approach which can balance rebuilding weak stocks in a mixed fishery configuration, whilst maintaining the socio-economic fabric of the fishing communities dependent on those stocks. Looking back, we may see this as an important, even historic, breakthrough.

Discards

Another area in which the fresh shoots of divergence can be seen is in the treatment of discard policy. The EU landing obligation has proved (as anticipated by many) to be a crude, ineffectual, approach to minimising unwanted catch. Whilst the EU is tied into maintaining its landing obligation for the immediate future, the UK is now in a position to develop more agile alternatives which reduce the threat of chokes in mixed fisheries. An initial departure can be seen in relation to the treatment of exemptions and TAC reductions in the annual agreement. Developing a tailored discard policy, most likely as part of individual fisheries management plans, as envisaged by the Fisheries Act will be a UK priority. 

Specialised Committee for Fisheries

An idea of the range and significance of the new Specialised Committee for Fisheries is seen in the Committee’s first work programme

The Delegations identified the following issues to be discussed in the SCF:

Skates and rays, paragraph 5(e)

• Terms of reference for Celtic sea mixed fishery advice
• Deep sea stocks
• Stocks with no ICES advice
• Geographic flexibility
• Picked Dogfish (spurdog)
• Footnotes
• Prohibited species
• Management of discards, landing obligation and TAC deductions
• Technical measures
• Multi-year strategies for non-quota stocks
• Later exchanges of data on non-quota stocks
• Seabass monitoring, management and assessment

Big Picture

The annual negotiations with the EU are one important part of a bigger set of negotiations that ultimately have a profound influence on where we can fish, and how, and how much.

The TCA obviously sets the framework for fisheries relations with the EU and enshrines the asymmetric balance on access to each other’s waters and quota shares was at the heart of the Common Fisheries Policy and continues under the TCA. Until 2026, the TCA will shape the outcome of annual negotiations. What happens after that date is an open question. The EU is confident that there are sufficient dissuasive powers within the TCA to make the UK think twice about acting as any other normal coastal state. Time will tell.

The failure to reach fisheries agreements with Norway or Faroes, reflects the turbulent adjustment period before things settle down into a new equilibrium.

Where fishing sits in the Government’s priorities in the interim and around 2026 will be critical. Few predicted that fishing would become a totemic issue within the UK’s departure from the EU, but it was the last issue to be “settled” in the TCA and leaves a lasting and potentially toxic legacy.

Our immediate request will now be for a meeting with Defra/MMO to understand were we have got to in the wake of the TCA and annual negotiations, and what our options might be from moving forward from here.

The full written record of the agreement can be found here.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/fisheries-consultations-between-the-uk-and-the-eu-in-2021

Defra Press Release

FOR IMMMEDIATE RELEASE:

UK and EU sign agreement on catch levels for 2021

• Agreement covers catch limits for 70 shared fish stocks worth approximately £333m in fishing opportunities to the UK fleet
• Deal ensures certainty for UK industry with fishing levels set for remainder of 2021
• UK and EU to work together on shared sustainability objectives through the Specialised Committee on Fisheries

The UK has now concluded annual fisheries negotiations with the EU, providing certainty for the fishing industry on catch limits for the remainder of 2021.

The catch limits known as Total Allowable Catches have been set for 70 fish stocks and supersede the previous provisional catch limits for 2021.

The agreement provides stability for UK fleets with all Total Allowable Catches remaining in line with the provisional catch limits set earlier this year, apart from 8 that have small increases.

The annual negotiations for 2021, in which the UK participated as an independent coastal State outside of the Common Fisheries Policy, follow the signing of the Trade and Cooperation Agreement between the UK and EU.

The agreement announced today means:

• The total value of the UK-EU fishing opportunities for the UK in 2021 is approximately £333 million. This equates to around 160,000 tonnes.
• As a result of the Trade and Cooperation Agreement and these negotiations, the UK fleet will have around 26,000 tonnes more quota for these stocks compared to quotas allocated in 2020. This increase is estimated to be worth around £27 million.
• Both parties have also committed to exchanging fishing quota on an interim basis ahead of a longer-term exchange system which will be set up by the Specialised Committee on Fisheries.

The Specialised Committee on Fisheries established under the Trade and Cooperation agreement will provide a forum for discussions on fisheries matters between the EU and UK and will meet for the first time in June.

The Environment Secretary, George Eustice said:

“As we move forward as an independent coastal State, we have been steadfast in representing the interests of our industry and seeking to manage our fisheries more sustainably.

“This agreement provides certainty to our fishing industry and we now have a stable platform in place for managing our fisheries this year and in future years.”

As a responsible coastal State, the UK is committed to increasing the sustainable management of fish stocks in UK waters.

The agreement with the EU also provides a framework, via the Specialised Committee on Fisheries, for continued cooperation on fisheries management to support conservation and sustainable fishing. The agreement also adjusted measures for the management of seabass to reduce the level of wasteful discards without affecting sustainability.

The Written Record for these negotiations will be published following the EU’s internal ratification processes.

Notes to Editors: 

• The UK will have roughly £27m more quota in these 70 stocks than that which was allocated in 2020. This figure takes into account the UK’s new, larger, shares of quota under the Trade and Cooperation Agreement as well as Total Allowable Catch reductions which were made for sustainability reasons.
• As an independent coastal State with a commitment to achieving sustainable fisheries the UK is taking a more rigorous approach to assessing Maximum Sustainable Yield in relation to negotiated outcomes.
• As a result of an independent review of the assessment method these figures are not comparable to previous years, a more detailed report will be published shortly outlining the assessment method and a comparison of this year’s negotiated outcomes to previous years.
• This ‘Maximum Sustainable Yield review’, initiated by Defra, demonstrates ministerial commitments to strengthening sustainable fisheries management for the benefit of our marine environment.

Trilateral annual fisheries negotiations between the UK, EU and Norway concluded on 16 March 

The NFFO will reserve comment on the package as a whole until after the agreed record has been published. In the meantime, the information that has been made available is reproduced below.

It is worthy of note that the following factors have been significant both in the content of the agreement and how the negotiations were conducted:

• The terms of the UK/EU trade and cooperation agreement
• The UK’s insistence on its right of regulatory autonomy as an independent coastal state
• The EU’s efforts to limit divergence from the CFP
• The constraints applied by having to negotiate remotely because of Covid related restrictions

TACs

One of the central purposes of the agreement, setting TACs for 2021, had already been taken out of the equation after the UK, at the beginning of May, autonomously set provisional quotas for the UK fleets; these will now be formally adopted into the agreement without significant change.

Precedents

The main points of disagreement between the two parties (now resolved) eventually boiled down to:

Area flexibility

The following changes to Area flexibility apply North of 58.30’, between Area 6a (West of Scotland) and Area 4 (North Sea). Otherwise, existing flexibilities continue to apply.

East to West   West to East

Anglers       30%                   20%

Haddock.   10%                   25%

Ling             20%                 40%

Megrim       20%                 25%

Saithe         15%                   30%

Tusk             25%                 10%

Hake              6%                 100%

Mackerel    60%                 100%

Quota Exchanges

Both parties have committed to engage urgently on interim quota exchanges and to a clear timeframe ahead of the establishment of the Specialised Committee. The Specialised Committees (yet to be established) will formulate arrangements for a more permanent exchange mechanism.

Non-quota species

Both parties have agreed that notwithstanding the terms of the TCA, and reflecting the late stage in the year, tonnage limits on catches of non-quota species in each respective EEZ will not be enforced for 2021. Instead, catches on non-quota species will be monitored and work on a long-term management plan will be initiated within the context of the Specialised Committee

Seabass management measures

Arrangements for seabass have been amended:

• Trawl/seine catch limits have been changed from 520kgs per two-month period to 380kgs per month, within a 5% per trip limit
• The ban on bycatch of bass by shore nets has been removed, subject to close monitoring and limitation to those involved in this fishery prior to 2017
• There is no change to the recreational bag limit for bass
• Joint work on bass will continue in the specialised committee

Celtic Sea technical measures

The UK will apply new technical measures in the Celtic Sea which will apply to all vessels operating in that zone. These will apply from 3^rd September 2021. Details to follow.

Industrial Species

Notwithstanding the UK’s principled opposition to industrial fishing, the following TACs were agreed:

• Sandeel         92,500 tonnes
• Norway Pout 128,300 tonnes

Skates and Rays

Better ways of managing the various skates and rays stocks will be referred to the specialised committee

Mixed Fishery Advice

It is expected that the agreed record will contain wording on a more rational approach to managing mixed fisheries in the future.

Written Record

All of the above is based on oral information and may be subject to adjustment when the UK/EU written record is made available.