Eastern IFCA are consulting with fishermen to gather information on fishing activity to inform the development of the Closed Areas Byelaw 2021.
EIFCA is seeking information on the levels of fishing activity in the areas under consideration for management to understand the impact that any new measures may have.
The Lincolnshire Coast
It is investigating the need for closures to bottom-towed gear in the inshore section of the Inner Dowsing, Race Bank and North Ridge Special Area of Conservation (SAC).
North Norfolk Coast, Cromer Shoal Chalk Beds Marine Conservation Zone (MCZ)
It is investigating the need to restrict netting activity (fixed nets and drift nets) within the zone.
The consultation closes at midday 28th June 2021.
More information about this consultation can be found here.
Net Zero, the Blue Economy and MPAs
The 2019 Offshore Wind Sector Deal, the government’s industrial strategy for offshore wind, and a succession of ever more ambitious announcements that have followed places offshore wind front and centre in meeting the government’s Net Zero commitments. The present target is for 40GW of generating capacity of full commercial-scale offshore wind by 2030 and a further 1GW for the development of pre-full commercial-scale floating wind projects. But that is just a start. The Climate Change Committee has planning scenarios to meet Net Zero with up to 140GW of offshore wind by 2050, implying an acceleration of deployment beyond 2030. If that scenario is realised it would translate to more than a 13-fold increase over the current operational generating capacity of 10.5GW. And the expansion of offshore wind is not only in the UK; the EU has ambitions for 60GW of generating capacity by 2030 and 300GW by 2050, with the largest proportion of this foreseen for deployment in the North Sea.
The colossal scale of this ambition is hard to comprehend. There is, as yet no clearly defined analysis on what it means in terms of the proportion of our seas that would host wind farms, but undoubtedly its scale would mean a complete transformation in the use of marine space that inevitably will encroach extensively on customary fishing grounds.
And of course, it is not only the wind farm structures themselves that present an issue for fisheries. At least as important is the network of inter-array and export cables necessary to convey their output to the electricity grid or to electrolysers to produce hydrogen – another significant strand in the drive to net zero – and also the expansion of cable interconnectors to link national grids more extensively.
Fishing activity is already obliged to operate in an increasingly crowded marine space, encompassing existing constructed wind farms, the oil and gas and aggregates sectors, the telecoms cables sector, which is also presently undergoing a large expansion, and other fledging but growing sectors such as mariculture and potentially other types of marine energy. To top it off, this unprecedented expansion in the blue economy is taking place within the context of the network of MPAs that now cover 38% of UK seas.
But in contrast to the support given by the government to the various blue economy marine sectors, strategic attention to the spatial needs of commercial fisheries have received close to no attention. In fact, in the wake of Brexit it has been quite the reverse, with a signalling of a hardening stance against accommodating fisheries within existing MPAs, to be followed with an expected announcement of plans for highly protected marine areas that will be no-take zones.
An Agenda for Co-existence
Setting aside, for the moment, the squeeze on fishing grounds from other industries and MPAs, if the government is to avoid mass displacement of fishing activities from a rapidly expanding offshore wind sector, the planning system will need to be a lot smarter and agile than it currently is. Most English waters still await the formal adoption of draft marine plans, expected later this year, but it is already clear that on their own they are not up to the task of guiding marine development on this scale. Forward planning is needed with a sufficiently long-term view.
So far, this has been limited. Scotland has recently developed a new wind sectoral plan, but this is limited to 10GW generating capacity, with the expectation that future iterations will earmark further development. Outside of Scotland, there is no sectoral planning system, with the void occupied by a piecemeal seabed leasing system administered by the Crown Estate. The latest Round 4 for nearly 8GW of seabed rights was the least inclusive to date, focussed on a market-facing competitive tendering process with other marine stakeholders excluded from decisions on site selection.
Crucially, the planning system needs to give much greater prioritisation to co-existence and be savvier in delivering on it. Although the issue is referred to in the Marine Policy Statement and covered in all marine plans in some way, implementation is largely passive and limited solely to the planning application/marine licencing processes.
One development in the last few years has been requirements for Fisheries Liaison and Co-existence plans in England or Fisheries Management and Mitigation Strategies in Scotland. While these are useful, they are concerned principally with the coordination of day-to-day operational activities in the vicinity of the wind farm, prepared late in the planning process or even post-consent. This is too late to address fundamental issues about wind farm design and location.
Windfarm Design
Wind farm design, including turbine spacing and layout, are more fundamental determinants of whether fishing activities can co-exist with offshore wind. Relative to an open sea state, a wind farm sited on fishing grounds will inevitably impede fisheries to some degree, as will associated installation and maintenance activities. Under current fixed wind farm turbine spacings, fishing methods that require wide areas in order to deploy gear such as large seine netting and pair trawling are incompatible. On the other hand, pot fisheries have been found to be able to operate in some constructed projects. For other fishing methods, such as single trawling and static nets, the jury is still out. There is presently a lack of evidence demonstrating significant numbers of vessels operating these gears within projects.
While the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) requires two lines of orientation to assist navigation through wind farms sites, turbine spacing is predominantly driven by the technology, not by an inherent objective to promote co-existence. Nonetheless, as the capacity rating of turbine technology continues to grow, turbine spacing is increasing, which potentially could provide more opportunities for co-existence.
Cable routing is a feature of offshore wind development where the planning system could provide more and better direction. The fishing industry could usefully feed into evidence on seabed conditions, whilst designs limiting the number of crossings between consecutive rows of turbines and/or bundling them could be prioritised. This would minimise the potential for bottom towed fishing gears from potentially interacting with an exposed cable. Due to the application of the Rochdale Envelope approach that provides post-consent flexibility to a developer over the design of the wind farm, such decisions are not presently given direction by the planning authority, even though they may impinge on co-existence.
Compared to fixed wind, where the question of co-existence is influenced by many factors, the advent of floating wind technologies threatens total fisheries exclusion, an issue that has not yet been recognised in government policy. This is because current commercial designs (left and right examples in the figure) use anchored catenary mooring lines extending out from the turbine platforms that would conflict with fishing gears. So-called “tension-leg” designs (figure, centre) with the mooring lines attached vertically to the platforms offer greater co-existence potential, but these are not yet commercially proven. The selection of the Celtic Sea for the build-out of the first generation of early commercial-scale floating wind projects is one of the most diverse and dense regions of fishing activity in the UK and will pose significant challenges.
Cable Interactions
If there are few planning constraints on cable routing, that is partly due to policies on burial and protection, which in theory should place cables out of harm’s way from interactions with fishing gears. Delivering on this policy is ultimately down to delivering good engineering practice. In areas where physical processes acting on the seabed routinely shift sediments, like in much of the southern North Sea, burial needs to account for topographic changes to the seabed that would over time lead to cables becoming exposed. Given the occurrence of cable exposures in recently constructed projects, it is questionable whether current target burial depths, especially for inter-array cables that have shallower target burial depths, are adequately accounting for this issue.
Beyond cable installation, ongoing management of cable exposure risk is fundamental to ensuring safe fishing practice. This can be achieved through monitoring and the timely communication of marine hazards to the fishing fleet. Warning systems are in place for this through the Kingfisher Bulletin, but improvements are possible in the future with the expansion of in-wheelhouse warning systems such as the FishSafe unit, which is currently used to alert of marine hazards associated with the oil and gas sector. The communication to the fishing industry of information on “as laid” depths of cables and changes following monitoring surveys would also help to better manage any emerging risks.
Good risk management should provide the means to minimise the potential for incidents occurring. However, the legal position on fishing in the vicinity of cables in the context of co-existence lacks clarity. Cables are protected in law against damage resulting from willful intent or culpable negligence. However, the underpinning legislation, the Telegraph Act (extended to other types of cables under the Continental Shelf Act) dates back to the nineteenth century when telegraph cables were first installed. It was not designed for the circumstances of the wide-ranging and growing networks of cables that are now in our seas.
Interpreting this archaic legislation, and failing to account for co-existence matters, the MCA advises that in order to minimise risk as much as possible, vessel operators should avoid fishing at a minimum distance of 0.25NM from submarine cables. In practice, this would effectively preclude fishing in the vicinity of all wind farms and the wide-ranging networks of cables beyond them. It serves to highlight that arrangements for governing cables-fisheries co-existence need significant refinement if the fishing industry is to have the assurance that is needed when returning to fishing grounds once turbine arrays are installed. Similarly, there is a need to ensure there is a system for managing liabilities and insurance indemnity that will be fit for purpose for the scale of projects and the density of cabling in our seas in the future.
A Vital Piece of the Marine Planning Jigsaw
Co-existence should not be left as an afterthought reserved only for consideration as part of the planning application process. It needs to be more purposefully built into forward and sectoral planning functions to work out what can and cannot successfully co-locate so that marine space may be allocated more efficiently for different purposes.
For fisheries, this means developing a better understanding of the use of marine space by fishing activities at micro and macro scales. At the micro-scale, this is about the space needed to operate different types of fishing activities practically and safely. To skippers of fishing vessels, the spatial patterns and requirements of their fishing activities are second nature, but for marine planners, these matters are not yet documented to inform decision-making. For offshore wind farm planning purposes, expert knowledge on the spatial operating requirements of different fishing types needs to be documented, whilst understanding of spatial use in the vicinity of wind farms can be enhanced over time through monitoring data.
At the macro scale, the challenge is to improve understanding of the sensitivity of different fisheries to the loss of access to fishing grounds. Presently, the examination of such issues occurs only as part of planning applications’ commercial fisheries and cumulative impact assessments. This is too late to influence project siting decisions and assessment methodologies are based on a relatively subjective and superficial examination of the issues. These essentially are based on a visual comparison of the scale of the footprint of current projects in the planning process with that of affected fishing grounds as defined by vessel monitoring system data of a particular gear group or piecemeal information on fishing grounds for the <12m fleet. The approach discounts projects and proposals that have been completed, assuming any impacts from these to be reflected in the baseline data (an approach that is endorsed by planning guidance). The result is the setting up of a shifting baseline problem where the analyst really does not understand the significance of the successive loss of access to fishing grounds that may have occurred up to that point.
A more thorough and focussed examination of the use of fishing grounds by different fleet segments would help to improve understanding of their sensitivity to loss. It would also provide vital information to be then used to identify persistent and sensitive fisheries and areas of importance. These areas may then be elevated within the marine planning system and assigned specific safeguarding policies; an approach examined by the Marine Management Organisation in 2014, but not yet progressed. The combination of this micro and macro-scale evidence on fisheries sensitivity can then be applied to sectoral planning, and cascade through to planning application processes. This should be supported by forward planning exercises that are inclusive of other marine stakeholders, not just the wind sector, to help inform site identification.
There is scope for applying this approach beyond fisheries, to other marine uses. Given the scale of the MPA network, if impacts to other marine users are to be minimised, then the potential to co-locate wind farms in areas within MPAs, where other activities such as fisheries are precluded, is essential. As a pre-requisite is for wind farm projects to be compatible with MPA conservation objectives, there is, therefore, a need for evidence-based guidance that can help to identify the areas and types of projects that are likely to fit the bill.
In the final analysis, if ultimately there is a failure to achieve co-existence, affected fishing communities should not be expected to bear the resulting costs and losses. However, for compensation for permanent and temporary loss of access to fishing grounds, there is no overall national framework that addresses the issues or provides for a dispute resolution mechanism. Unlike in other countries such as Denmark, these matters are left to be typically handled in an ad-hoc and relatively haphazard fashion where developers and the impacted fishers are left to sort things out locally. There is a growing need for this unsatisfactory state of arrangements to be formally addressed by the government.
Since the climate emergency has turbocharged offshore wind policy with the adoption in 2019 of the 2050 net zero commitment by the government, a flurry of policy initiatives to identify the changes needed and to chart paths to get there are now emerging. It is essential that our fishing communities see comparable leadership and change at the marine planning end of the equation so that these ambitions do not turn into an emergency for fishing livelihoods.
After successes with pop-up transmitting data tags in previous seasons, we will be deploying acoustic tags and receiver stations in summer 2021. These acoustic tags have a lifespan of up to 10 years and these fish will be “heard” by passive listening stations distributed throughout the northeast Atlantic and Mediterranean Sea.
To achieve our aims, we are now seeking formal Tenders to supply a vessel(s) from which to catch and tag ABFT in 2021. Interested parties should follow the instructions detailed in the attached document and submit their responses by 2359 BST on the 10th of June.
All queries should be sent to bluefin@exeter.ac.uk. Please be aware that Thunnus UK will make clarification questions and answers available to all bidders.
The Thunnus UK Team
The aim of the questionnaire is to gather anecdotal information from commercial whelk fishermen around the UK on local variations in whelk populations. The research is being undertaken by the Whelk Management Group (WMG) and was developed by Heriot-Watt University, Bangor University, Seafish, Cefas, Defra, Daera, and the IOM government.
By gathering anecdotal information on whelk populations, the WMG science subgroup aims to better understand to what extent whelk populations vary across the UK. Gathering knowledge from fishers, who work with these animals every day, means that it will be possible to target biological sampling effort in the future to make sure that important populations are surveyed.
Access the questionnaire here
To this point, our approach has been to challenge the Government’s shift from an evidence-based, adaptive, approach to one with more resemblance to a bulldozer. The appointment of the author of the highly partisan Benyon Report on Highly Protected Marine Areas1 to ministerial responsibility is a tipping point and suggests that this approach is a pointless furrow to plough.
There is only one question now. What is Government policy towards the many hundreds of fishermen who will now be displaced from their fishing grounds? In English waters, Defra/MMO’s intention is to introduce management measures for 40 offshore MPAs over the next three years – an insanely rushed approach that will leave no time for careful consideration, collation of evidence, or dialogue. Inshore, the picture is worse. Inshore vessels tend to have a more limited range and IFCAs are already overwhelmed by the task of implementing MPAs within the 6mile limit. 60% of their activities now relate to MPAs.
Meaningful discussion with the fishing industry on how to achieve the conservation objectives for each MPA site, whilst maintaining fishing activities consistent with those objectives, offers the most equitable and effective way to manage MPAs. This approach has now been abandoned in England. Scotland, meanwhile, remains committed to a measured, careful, policy focussed on implementing MPAs whilst minimising the impact on fishing businesses and communities.
Put bluntly, Defra is now intent on a reckless gung-ho approach to the implementation of MPAs in English waters. Serious displacement of fishing activities will be an unavoidable consequence.
This ministerial appointment makes it clear that for English waters there will be no turning back to dialogue, evidence and collaboration. Defra Ministers are not going to go against the recommendations made by one of their number. Only questions relating to displacement remain:
- What will be the scale of displacement effects as vessels are forced off their grounds in a kind of marine Highland Clearance?
- What is the Government’s policy to deal with the social, economic and environmental fallout of the new approach?
- How does this fit with the Government’s levelling up agenda?
At present there is no policy on displacement. There is a void. Silence. Nothing has been done to assess the extent of displacement. Nothing has been done to mitigate displacement. Nothing has been done to assure the fishing industry that its interests will be seriously taken into account or its views listened to.
Form
For those that think that our response to the shift in policy is alarmist, even a little hysterical, we would point to the debacle that is the EU landing obligation. Here was a policy in 2012 driven by a media campaign and political opportunism. Eight years on, it is widely recognised as an utter failure, a classic example of form over substance. It has destabilised fisheries management. The jury is out on whether it has reduced discards2. Choke risks3 are a substantial and serious threat that distorts fishing activity and management measures. And all because of dishonest presentation of statistics whipping up a public hysteria. The Government is now looking for a way out of the disastrous policy that it advocated and supported without losing face.
It will not escape notice that the Defra minister leading the charge on the landing obligation and taking the green glory was – Richard Benyon MP.
Evidence
How this new approach sits with the Fisheries Act, which requires that fisheries policy should be science-based, who knows? Not us. There seems to be a flat contradiction. The absence of an equivalent to the EU’s Scientific, Technical and Economic Committee, which provides as an authoritative, if not entirely independent, scientific filter for management policies is palpable. The nearest equivalent, conservation advisors, JNCC and Natural England, lack the independence or transparency to fulfil this role. Besides, they have not been tasked to study displacement effects.
It seems that the precautionary approach, or at least the Defra/MMO extreme interpretation of the precautionary approach, can be used as cover for anything. One can only suppose that the precautionary approach is the Government’s get out of jail card for the lack of an evidence-based policy. But it does rather make a mockery of the Fisheries Act, before that piece of legislation has got into first gear.
Scale
The new Defra policy on MPAs represents another violation of trust between the Government and the fishing industry. Marine conservation zones4 in English waters were designated on the explicit understanding that they would not be automatically closed to fishing. Assurances were made verbally and in writing that the social and economic impacts on the fishing industry would be front and centre in shaping management approaches that would achieve conservation objectives without unnecessary harm. Those assurances and commitments have been left behind, like so much offal. It is inconceivable that the fishing industry would have agreed to the designation of MCZs on the current scale had it been told honestly that these would be closed areas for fishing. A whole consultative exercise stretching over several years has been rendered null and void.
New Era
Our conclusion is that we have entered a new era. There will be no meaningful discussion on MPAs. There will be displacement of fishing activities on a huge scale. Our efforts as a Federation and as an industry must be focused on forcing the Government to face up to the consequences of its policies. Ministers must explain:
- What work has been done to assess the scale of displacement of fishing activities from MPAs?
- What will the cumulative effect of displacement be, when offshore wind and other marine infrastructure are included in the assessment?
- What will the social and economic consequences of displacement be?
- What will the environmental consequences of displacement be outside MPAs?
- How will those whose livelihoods have been impacted be compensated?
This Government is already earmarked to go down in history as Edward Heath Mark II for its betrayal of fishing in the Trade and Cooperation Agreement. A £100 million bung will not erase that stain. A bungled landing obligation has already been forgotten by the general public, but we are still dealing with its perverse and unintended consequences. Defra ministers are now about to embark on a further reckless and harmful policy to harvest the green vote. The bill will be paid by the fishing industry, vessels large and small, and £100 million for lost fishing opportunities in perpetuity will be chicken feed. More corrosive than the financial and economic impact will be the erosion of the fabric of our industry. Once a key component in the food security and cultural understanding of itself as a nation, fishing is being steadily relegated and displaced. Other national priorities, such as a trade deal with the EU and the development of offshore windfarms take precedence. A reckless approach to MPAs is just another thing on the list. There will be a reckoning but by then the damage will have been done.
Marine Protected Areas and Fishing Communities
MPAs have a valid and important role to play in the protection of vulnerable marine habitats and biodiversity. They are not a panacea or alternative to other conservation measures, but they do have an important role to play. Best practice in other parts of the world suggests that effective MPAs can coexist with certain types of fishing activity and that dialogue based on sound science can identify conservation strategies that minimise impacts on fishing activities and in particular avoid displacement effects and unintended consequences.
Hollowed-out fishing communities, replaced by second homes, can be the only result of the Government’s policies. For clarity, we don’t think that it is the Government’s MPA policy to force fishermen out of their communities and homes to make way for second-home owners. But that will be the effect.
At the very least, it is difficult to understand how Defra’s policy choices are compatible with its alleged levelling up agenda.
Learning from History/Institutional Memory
The Government may be flying blind, but we do have some notion of what could happen when fleets are displaced on a large scale. In 2003, under an emergency EU measure, a large area of the North Sea was closed to demersal fishing to protect spawning cod. The closure was driven by the worst of motivations: “The Government must be seen to be doing something”, always a recipe for superficial half-measures and unintended consequences.
Cefas scientists analysed the effects after the event. There were three:
- Nothing much was done for the conservation of cod because most of the same fish were caught shortly after the seasonal closure was lifted
- The Scottish demersal fleet was displaced onto areas rich with immature haddock where there was a massacre – with huge levels of discards
- The Dutch beam trawl fleet was displaced onto pristine areas never fished before – with extensive damage to biodiversity and the ecosystem
This example should have acted as a warning against policies driven by emotion and the drive for green credentials – without a proper attempt to understand the real-world consequences of policy.
The Government of the time had learnt the lessons but there is no sign that this administration has taken them on board.
The lessons that had been learnt were the importance of:
- A careful site-by-site analysis of how the conservation objectives for each site could be achieved whilst minimising the impacts on the fishing industry
- Close dialogue with those who would be affected by management measures
- Close collaboration in the design of management measures
- An adaptive approach – meaning that lessons are learned as you go and management measures adjusted accordingly
Lack of institutional memory is clearly a feature affecting both Defra and the MMO and we will all pay the consequences for it.
Devolution
The NFFO is no fan of devolution, which has added layers of complexity to managing fisheries in the UK EEZ. Nevertheless, it has to be conceded that Marine Scotland have got it right and Defra/Marine Management Organisation have got it wrong. Scotland has adhered to its collaborative, careful, evidence-based approach.
Meanwhile, south of the border, the earlier systematic, collaborative, adaptive approach has been ditched in favour of an extreme interpretation of the precautionary approach. The consequences of this change are already being seen. The proposed blanket ban on bottom-trawling on the Dogger Bank Special Area of Conservation is the first offshore example. Whereas previous work pointed to a zoned approach which allowed that bottom trawling on some parts of the SAC would be consistent with achieving the conservation objectives, the UK government in flexing its post-Brexit muscles has proposed a blanket ban. But what then? Where will that fishing activity be diverted to? What will the consequences be there?
Similarly, the Secretary of State has approved the Sussex IFCA ban on inshore trawling on flimsy evidence and flawed procedure which doesn’t pass the smell test.
There are examples of good practice prior to Defra’s policy flip. In the Wash and North Norfolk Coast SAC, Eastern IFCA adopted a zoned approach combined with an effort cap of the brown shrimp fishery after a rigorous examination of the evidence. There is an implicit recognition that the Wash towns are dependent on the historic Wash fisheries and deserved fair treatment. The MMO and Kent and Essex IFCA managed to find a solution in a zoned approach to the Margate and Long Sands SAC, like the Dogger Bank, another sandbank MPA, but a vital fishing area for the Thames coastal communities, simultaneously under pressure from huge levels of marine development.
Marine Protected Areas
To repeat ourselves, marine protected areas in their various forms, (SACs, MCZs, etc) are important. Where vulnerable marine habitats and sensitive features are identified, carefully designed and implemented marine protected areas can play an absolutely essential protective role. They are less useful for highly migratory species, but fortunately other tools are available to minimise adverse impacts of certain fishing gears.
What is missing in the new Defra approach is a sense of balance or appreciation of the trade-offs necessary to achieve the best overall outcomes.
Fishing plays an important role in providing food security, and in sustaining coastal communities and a wide range of economic activity. Like all forms of food production, fishing has an environmental footprint. The challenge is to maintain food production whilst minimising adverse ecological impacts. MPAs have an important role to play in managing fishing’s impact – but there is such a thing as good policy ruined by poor implementation.
There is a widespread misconception that marine protected areas are or should be devoid of all forms of fishing. But the pursuit of conservation on land in our national parks and nature reserves does not necessitate nor involve the wholesale cleansing of those who work there and nor should it just because it is offshore. A wide range of sustainable farming and forestry are considered compatible with protected status.
What is important is to have a clear idea of what is being protected and the best way to do it. Some forms of fishing will be incompatible with a site’s conservation objectives or might only be considered sustainable with certain adaptations.
The essential point is to have the process in place that allows for the evidence to be gathered and the discussions held that would lead to the best outcomes – and where possible avoiding displacement effects.
Repercussions
The repercussions of this volte-face will be profound. Aside from the consequences for individual fishing businesses and fishing communities, as the noose tightens on the inshore and offshore sectors, conflict and adversarial relationships can be expected to replace cooperation and collaboration. Competition for space, already intense in some areas, will become acute. MMO and IFCAs will become enforcers – the equivalent of bailiffs – rather than be enabling and facilitating regulators. The concept of co-management will remain on the drawing board rather than the aspirational lodestar that we had hoped for.
Crossroads Industry
The fishing industry is being buffeted by European, national and world politics and stands at a dangerous crossroads.
In the case of European politics, it is all too easy to understand that the UK fishing industry was made the poster child for the UK’s departure from the EU and “taking back control” – until it was dumped on the shore very far away from a future as a genuine autonomous independent coastal state that it had been promised by the Prime Minister and a slew of cabinet ministers.
In the case of national politics, the fishing industry also risks becoming a political football as Scotland edges towards independence and the Westminster Government throws concession after concession northwards to stem the tide.
On the world stage, saving the planet from irreversible climate catastrophe means lots of changes, including a massive expansion of offshore wind – which has the potential to cause massive displacement effects for the fishing industry. Even the miracle of global connectedness through the internet has consequences for fishers – as multiple trans-oceanic fibre optic cables are laid across the sea floor – another obstacle to avoid.
Standing at a crossroads can be a dangerous location.
Change is unavoidable. It is the only constant. But change can be ushered in in a good way or a bad way. The government could live up to its commitments to the fishing industry. The siting and development of offshore infrastructure projects can be done with the involvement of the fishing industry to mitigate the worst effects. All parts of the UK fishing industry could be treated fairly.
And a network of marine protected areas could be introduced to protect vulnerable marine ecosystems, without displacing fishers in a new kind of marine clearance. The Government has chosen a different path and the consequences will be profound.
Notes
- How “independent” can an independent review be, when the review panel is utterly unbalanced, the chairman is on the board of Blue Marine Foundation, and will now be part of the ministerial team which makes judgement on whether its recommendations should be implemented? It does not pass the smell test.
- By contrast, the 20 years prior to the Landings Obligation saw discards in England across all fisheries reduced by 50% and in the North Sea groundfish fishery (all member states) by 90%
- Chokes occur in mixed fisheries when under the landing obligation the exhaustion of quota for one species (out of perhaps up to 25) means that the vessel, or group must tie up for the rest of the year, foregoing the economic benefit of the other species.
- Marine Protected Areas is a generic term that covers:
- Marine Conservation Zones – in English waters
- Special Areas of Conservation – adopted from EU environmental legislation
- Special Protection Area – adopted from EU environmental legislation
Commsave Credit Union has been operating for nearly 30 years and has helped its 30,621 members to save over £86m. In January, the existing members agreed to support the UK’s fishing community by extending the Credit Union’s affordable financial services to all fishers, fish processors and fishmongers throughout the UK – in effect supporting the entire ‘catch to plate’ fishing community. Regulatory approval has been obtained and the Credit Union is now open to workers throughout the fishing industry.
The Seafarers’ Charity has awarded a grant to the Credit Union to support the development of the Credit Union’s new services for the fishing industry. They have worked closely to understand and respond to the financial needs of fishing communities. In addition to savings and loans accounts which are available to all members, the Credit Union has created financial products designed to suit the financial needs of fishers. These include:
- A Stormy Reserve Fund– a savings account in which money can be set aside and accessed immediately at times when unable to earn an income from fishing.
- A HMRC Budget & Bill Payment account– this savings account enables regular amounts to be set aside to pay the annual tax and National Insurance bill. At the end of the financial year, the Credit Union can transfer the amount saved to HMRC.
- A special loan schemeto support access to government grants that require an up-front capital contribution.
The Credit Union pays a competitive annual dividend on members’ savings and, for the current financial year, expects the return on members’ savings to be 1.5%. They also provide a free Bereavement Fund for all members. On death (from any cause) this Fund writes off any outstanding debt to the Credit Union. In addition, the Bereavement Fund can make a payment to a nominated beneficiary ranging from £500 to £5,000, dependent on the average savings balance of the member over the 12 months prior to death. For those who do not have life assurance, this will provide a welcome and free benefit with an expediated payment at the time it is most needed, as the payment is not subject to probate.
Amanda Ivey, Chief Executive of Commsave Credit Union said, ‘We are proud to be able to offer our services to those working in the fishing industry. We have worked with The Seafarers’ Charity to understand the needs that exist and how we can offer the right products to meet those needs. We have 30 years’ experience in enabling members to access the financial services they need, and we look forward to welcoming new members from fishing communities all over the UK.’
Catherine Spencer, CEO, The Seafarers’ Charity, said, ‘Our partnership with Commsave Credit Union demonstrates our new approach to tackling need at source and preventing potential problems. Our research demonstrated that fishers experience a high incidence of priority debt problems which can have unfortunate consequences if left unpaid.
‘This includes outstanding debts for tax and national insurance payments which have longer-term consequences when trying to access welfare benefits or a state pension, as well as impacting the ability to obtain a mortgage or a car loan. A lack of holiday pay and difficulty obtaining financial products providing protection for sickness, critical injury, and life assurance have also been identified within the research as areas of concern.
‘In addition, some fishers find it difficult to establish and contribute to a personal pension plan, missing out on the tax efficiency and tax relief attached to this type of long-term saving. Government grants requiring an upfront financial contribution also created a barrier for those who did not have spare capital available and struggled to access a bank loan. We think this partnership is revolutionary and will provide a safety net and create financial resilience which will enable more fishing families to thrive.’
The fishing industry has faced unprecedented challenges with COVID-19 impacting sales to domestic and overseas hospitality, followed swiftly by the need to adjust to new export regulations arising from our trading relationship with Europe post Brexit. The Seafarers’ Charity’s research ‘Fishing Without a Safety Net’ revealed the precarious nature of reliance on a fishing income. It highlighted how economic necessity drives fishers out to sea even when seas are at their most dangerous. And that many fishing families lack a financial safety net to fall back on when the weather, illness or repairs prevent them from going to sea.
The Seafarers’ Charity (King George’s Fund for Seafarers) was previously known as Seafarers UK, it changed its name on 15 March 2021.
Further information about Commsave Credit Union is available at www.commsave.co.uk/fish
The project is looking for 4-6 south-east England based inshore netters to be involved in testing the equipment and collecting data for this project. There is a financial incentive being offered to the boats involved.
If you are interested in participating in this project or have any questions, could you please contact Tony Delahunty, ideally by the 31st May. His contact details are;
Email: no_thumbs_tone@hotmail.com
Mobile: 0797 4254248.
Training Trust Chairman, Bob Casson said:
“I am delighted to be able to announce this further round of support for our industry. This is possible entirely because of the hard work of Ian Rowe and his team in NFFO Services, and the generosity of the NFFO Services Board in its donations to the Trust.”
“Since 2001, the Training Trust has made grant offers of £860,000 – all generated from the profits of our dynamic services company.”
“We intend to use the tried and tested way of distributing our funds by inviting member producer organisations and regional (non-sector) committees to apply for uses consistent with the Trust’s objectives. In the past this has primarily been for various kinds of fishermen’s training and certain types of safety equipment. Each group will be able to spend up to a ceiling set in proportion to the NFFO subscriptions received. This approach ensures a fair and balanced approach across sectors and regions. A decentralised approach also ensures that the monies are being spent on what fishermen locally think is important.”
“The focus on safety and training is entirely appropriate. Although progress has been made in recent years this can still be a dangerous industry and recent tragedies are a bitter reminder that there can be no room for complacency.”
See the Sussex IFCA website for full details of the proposals and how to get involved https://www.sussex-ifca.gov.uk/live-consultations
Closing date is the 17th June.
The flyer covers a fatal accident to a crewman on board the scallop dredger Olivia Jean (TN35), north-east of Aberdeen, Scotland on 28 June 2019, see https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/safety-lessons-close-monitoring-of-crew-safety-on-fishing-vessels/safety-flyer-to-the-fishing-industry-olivia-jean
Vessel owners, crew and families are invited to take a 5 minute survey at https://wh1.snapsurveys.com/s.asp?k=162022111305 with a chance to win a £100 high street voucher.
TCA
The wider issue is that the Trade and Cooperation Agreement, concluded towards the end of last year, includes elements that are now only being properly understood – by both sides – as the terms of the agreement are applied. How the fishing of non-quota species is managed through tonnage limits is an entirely new area in which the implications of the TCA are being slowly understood and worked out. Another is the scope that the UK has to apply its own management measure within the UK EEZ.
Regulatory Autonomy
Clearly the French fishing industry hadn’t appreciated that the phrase regulatory autonomy used in the TCA means that both the EU and the UK (and by extension the Jersey authorities) have new powers to apply management measures in their own waters – as long as those are genuine management measures, informed by science and are not discriminatory. The measures applied by the Jersey authorities appear to be entirely consistent with the TCA and have been introduced for sound management reasons. More widely, it is likely that the UK (and its constituent parts) will over time, progressively diverge from the Common Fisheries Policy as it develops and applies tailored management measures.
Measures
There are several elements to the Jersey dispute:
- EU vessels fishing within UK (and Jersey) waters now require a UK (or Jersey) licence; vessels are only eligible for a licence if they can meet qualifying criteria, mainly that they can demonstrate activity in those areas during the reference period. Some vessels have submitted that proof and been issued a licence; some haven’t and will not be issued a licence until they do.
- There is an associated issue related to replacement vessel; it cannot make sense to allow a vessel of 80 metres replace a vessel of 8 meters. Discussions between the UK and the EU continue on how appropriate safeguards should be expressed
- Conditions attached to licences are one of the main methods through which fisheries are managed. New licence conditions for vessels operating within Jersey waters seem to be one of the complaints raised by the French industry but as long as these are applied for fisheries management reasons and apply equally to all vessels operating in that area, they are both legitimate and consistent with the TCA
- Gear restrictions and seasonal closures, likewise, are legitimate management measures, if they are evenly applied.
Jersey
The unique constitutional arrangements which apply to Jersey and the other Channel Islands mean that Jersey has independent authority to manage its fisheries. Perhaps better communications on both sides could have helped reduce frictions before they arose but the bottom line is that the French are fundamentally unhappy that the world has changed in ways that they do not like. One can sympathise, whilst still recognising that some level of adjustment was always going to be on the cards as the UK left the Common Fisheries Policy, even under the umbrella of the highly contentious and imperfect Trade and Cooperation Agreement.
This will mean that UK vessels will have no access to fish in Norwegian waters, north or south of 62o. Norwegian vessels will not be permitted to fish in UK waters. For the rest of 2021 It will also mean that quota exchanges will not take place. Traditionally, Norway has been interested in mainly pelagic quota, whilst the UK has been interested in demersal species, both in the North East Arctic and for North Sea stocks.
Explanation
At an industry briefing immediately after the talks collapsed, the NFFO indicated that it would now be important to have full scrutiny and analysis of the negotiations. As both parties have much to gain from an annual fisheries deal, we are anxious to understand why it was not possible to find agreement. A meeting with fisheries ministers has been arranged.
Consequences
The loss of very significant fishing opportunities will carry direct consequences for the vessels and fishing businesses concerned but also a range of indirect consequences, including fleet displacement.
Whilst the frustration and disappointment surrounding the Trade and Cooperation Agreement with the EU was mainly driven by thwarted expectations, the failure to reach agreement with Norway will mean a significant and absolute reduction in fishing opportunities for our fleets.
Together with the failure of talks with Faroes to secure an agreement, there is likely to be a significant displacement effect as vessels try to make a living in the constrained waters of the North Sea and West of Scotland.
How to support vessels and fleets impacted, through what is turning out to be a very difficult year, will be at the forefront of the Federation’s points to ministers.
Positioning
Until we receive a full briefing it will be difficult to understand the negotiation dynamic that led to this outcome but, as with the UK/EU negotiations, all parties will have an eye to the precedents set for the future. Access to fish in UK waters and post CFP adjustments are certainly part of the mix. Negotiations for an agreement for 2022 are expected to begin in the Autumn.
UK/EU
There are signs that the UK/EU negotiations for an agreement in 2021 are also coming to a head. Negotiations will resume tomorrow (30th April) and the EU is expected to respond to a UK final offer. The issue of access is not on the table but throughout the negotiations there has been a tension between the EU’s efforts to bind the UK back into CFP-type arrangements, and the UK’s scope to use regulatory autonomy when this is the preferable option. At some point this divergence is likely to become apparent, where agreement can’t be reached.
The NFFO is presently represented on its national steering group.
If you are interested in getting involved contact them here.
The Fisheries and Seafood Scheme will provide £6.1 million over the next 12 months to support England’s seafood sector, coastal communities and marine environment.
The first panel for 2021 is scheduled to be held in the week commencing 21 June 2021.
To see Seafish’s full response click here
Please find the full press release here.
Becoming an independent coastal state, the one consolation prize for fisheries from the dire outcomes of Brexit, carried with it the idea that fishing communities be brought more successfully into the orbit of a co-managed approach to fisheries. Gone would be the days of faceless Commission bureaucrats making decisions, without any dialogue, over matters they only half understood, while generating a host of unintended consequences in their wake. Now with these powers repatriated, rather than the UK government working through the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP), the Marine Management Organisation (MMO) has gained responsibility for managing fisheries for conservation purposes, including within MPAs, through its newly acquired byelaw making powers under the Fisheries Act.
But just two months in, instead of laying the groundwork for delivering co-management, it has replaced a UK government-backed proposal under the CFP to close to most bottom towed fishing gears around a third of the Dogger Bank, a large shallow sandbank in the central North Sea, with a complete ban on such gears. The proposal it replaced had received stakeholder input into its design. The MMO’s has had none. Rather than moving forward to bring resource users closer to decision-making, the punishing reversal and the remote-control way it arrived at it, harks back to the playbook of the Commission’s most tin-eared past.
It is also a reversal for risk-based decision-making based on best available evidence. A read through the MMO’s consultation documents reveals that a hard-line language of precaution has replaced one of balance and managed risk. Under this approach, the nuances of the effects of towed gears on the most dynamic and resilient marine habitats in the North Sea count for zero. Validating what effects fishing really has through a monitoring programme that compares areas fished from those that are not – nowhere to be seen. The unintended consequences of displacing all this activity elsewhere in the North Sea and beyond is reserved to little more than a footnote ending with a question mark.
All of this comes as construction starts on four of the largest offshore wind farms in the same area about to be cleared of fishing, and Greenpeace, following its illegal and dangerous boulder dumping vigilantism on the Dogger Bank last year, starts a new campaign in the Channel. Fired up by its unsanctioned actions – it received not even the equivalent of a fixed administrative penalty (FAP) from the MMO (fishermen can expect much more for much less), Greenpeace’s bravado that “it works” (1) is hard to refute.
So as fishing communities pick themselves back up from this hammer blow, how did it come to this?
From Co-designers to the Outcasts of Management
Planning fisheries measures for the Dogger Bank started off with high ambitions for a co-managed approach. Despite, or perhaps because it was a complex site to administer, spanning UK, Dutch and German waters, it was the first of any size containing sedimentary habitats to be progressed through the machinery of the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP). The North Sea Regional Advisory Council (now NSAC), a product of the 2002 reform of the CFP aimed at fixing the broken relationship between the Commission and those that it managed, was charged in 2011 with coming up with a management proposal. Although significant progress was made between industry and NGO members of the NSRAC to produce a consensus proposal based on zoning areas where gear restrictions would be applied, without the guiding hand of official scientific input and without the actual decision-makers being in the room this proved not possible (2). Last year, the NSAC reviewed its experience with the process and made a series of recommendations to improve how stakeholder participation may be best married with science-based decision-making (3).
Although the NSAC industry, nor NGO representatives, were to have any further hand in the design of management measures, these proposals were used as the starting point for informing a joint recommendation between the UK, Dutch and German governments to close around a third of the adjoining SACs to bottom towed gears, which incorporated around a half in German waters. There were disagreements over precluding seine nets from the management restrictions with the UK and Netherlands arguing that they did not need to be included versus Germany which thought they did; Germany, therefore, precluded seines in the management zones whilst the UK and the Netherlands did not. Following the submission of the Joint Recommendation to the Commission in 2019, a review by STECF (4) the Commission’s scientific advisory body, also highlighted seines as an issue, that further attention is paid to fishing effort displacement and control and that coordinated monitoring programme be implemented so that after a 6-year review period the appropriate location and size of management areas may be revaluated. Notwithstanding this, it considered “the final proposal represents a trade-off between protection of the sandbanks and socio-economic interests, in line with Article 2 of the Habitats Directive 92/43/EEC.”
While all of this was progressing, in 2013 Defra began to introduce what it termed “the revised approach” to managing fishing in MPAs in English waters in response to a challenge that it was not being sufficiently proactive. This identified high-risk features for which management measures should be prioritised such as reef features and seagrass beds, whilst sedimentary habitats would be subject to more detailed assessments. Habitats subject to high levels of natural disturbance such as sediments in shallow water “where natural disturbance may be significant relative to anthropogenic impacts” were singled out where an adaptive management approach as an alternative to blanket prohibitions “may be considered disproportionate and unnecessary to meet the requirements under Article 6(2) of the Habitats Directive to take appropriate measures to prevent deterioration to the site.” This approach was regarded as consistent with the “draft proposals for the management of the Dogger Bank SCI” (5). Subsequently, only last year, the MMO together with the government’s conservation advisors completed a project that developed and tested a participatory process using an adaptive management framework for making management decisions (6).
History Forgotten
All of this has been instantly forgotten like a dream in the post-Brexit new dawn. It has happened when there has been no fundamental change to the evidence base on the effects of fishing. If anything, where the MMO has undertaken additional work to quantify the fishing footprint on the Dogger Bank, it has demonstrated that it is smaller than might have been expected from a visual inspection of fishing track data. Nor has there been a fundamental change in the legal framework which governs MPAs that owe their origin to the Habitats Directive; this is all retained EU law. Nor can the government reasonably claim (as it has done (7)) that agreement from EU Member States made it difficult to introduce measures under the CFP; Germany had taken a harder stance than it had done. In the wake of the EU referendum, except for the Dogger Bank, it had also held off pressing forward with draft plans for a host of other offshore sites, all of which had been through a process of stakeholder engagement (8).
This matters not only for the Dogger Bank and the precedent it signals for the rest of the MPA network, with the potential for mass displacement of fishing activities risking negative environmental impacts and chaos and conflict as fleets come into conflict with one another for years to come, but also because it undermines the vital signs of good fisheries governance – trust and cooperation. After all, what is the purpose of fishing communities working with fisheries managers when after a decade of cooperation on generating a common understanding of the evidence and basis for management, if at the 11th hour it is to be swept over the side by the illegal activities of Greenpeace and threats of legal action?
In a timely reminder of the potential sustainability benefits of co-managed approaches (9), Paul Hart, Emeritus Professor at the University of Leicester draws on several characterises of human behaviour from the fields of experimental and observational behavioural economics that may underpin successful management outcomes, including that:
– Those involved in designing systems for fisheries management and who have frequent interactions between members of a group involved in such an endeavour are more inclined to have a sense of ownership over it and ensure its maintenance.
– Those involved in contributing towards the management process (and evidence associated with its maintenance such as stock evaluation) are contributing to a public good that in turn legitimises their right to fish from which they exercise a greater interest in maintaining a suitable system of sanctions against free riders who undermine the system.
As Hart points out, giving more responsibility to the industry entails changes to the functions of management institutions where institutional path dependency to preserve status and power means that when changes do occur, they are often just incremental. It took a serious breakdown in the system of fisheries governance in the 1990s for the Commission to take a hard look at what was wrong, and even then, did not introduce reforms that gave industry any actual direct power over its own management; the work of the Advisory Councils is just that, advisory.
The Marine Management Organisation, a decade-old institution, is a relative newcomer to fisheries management and one that has only just been given expanded responsibilities. Notwithstanding the playing out of higher politics, this perhaps goes some way to explaining why in the face of the political signals of a green Brexit and coaxed by Greenpeace’s dangerous antics, it has so easily swung into a lowest common denominator remote control mode of management. A longer-term view, both backwards and forwards is desperately needed if post-Brexit fisheries governance is not going to head down the same cul-de-sacs of its CFP predecessor. Fishers who are to be expelled from customary fishing grounds deserve a better and a more just response than this, as does the sustainable management of our seas.
References
1. Greenpeace blocks destructive fishing with new ‘boulder barrier’ off the coast of Brighton https://www.greenpeace.org.uk/news/live-greenpeace…
2. Position paper on fisheries management in relation to nature conservation for the combined area of 3 national Natura 2000 sites (SACs) on the Dogger Bank https://www.noordzeeloket.nl/publish/pages/126227/…
3. NSAC Advice on lessons learned from the Dogger Bank Process https://www.nsrac.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/0…
4. Review of Joint Recommendations for Natura 2000 sites at Dogger Bank, Cleaver Bank, Frisian Front and Central Oyster grounds (STECF-19-04). Publications Office of the European Union, Luxembourg, 2019, ISBN 978-92-76-11227-3, doi:10.2760/422631, JRC117963 https://stecf.jrc.ec.europa.eu/reports/env-impacts…
6. Developing a participatory approach to the management of fishing activity in UK offshore Marine Protected Areas https://jncc.gov.uk/our-work/mpa-adaptive-manageme…
7. Defra (2020) Our response to Greenpeace’s action at Dogger Bank https://deframedia.blog.gov.uk/2020/09/23/our-resp…
8. These include North East of Farne Deeps MCZ, Swallow Sands MCZ, Inner Dowsing Race Bank and North Ridge SAC, North Norfolk Sand Banks SAC, Haisborough Hammond and Winterton SAC, Canyons MCZ, South West Deeps (West) MCZ, Greater Haig Fras MCZ, East of Haig Fras MCZ, Offshore Brighton MCZ, Offshore Overfalls MCZ, Bassurelle Sandbank SAC, South Dorset MCZ, Croker Carbonate Slabs SAC, Pisces Reef Complex SAC.
9. Hart, P. (2021) Stewards of the Sea. Giving power to fishers, Marine Policy, 126 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/…
Header photograph: JNCC