Are you interested in additional management methods to avoid unwanted catch ?

Disclaimer : The views expressed in this report are those of the stakeholders that were interviewed and in no way represent the views of the research institutes, the national authorities or the European Commission.

Commonalities

There were again fewer commonalities in the area of suggested management changes.

Temporary area closure

The most obvious commonality was in temporary area closures. Danish and Greek fishermen both specifically proposed the use of Real Time Closures (RTC) to protect particular species. Irish fishermen have proposed closures before, e.g. Celtic Sea cod box, and would probably support others as long as they were fully involved. Some also supported the use of rolling closures in the Irish Sea for the protection of skates and rays. They are suspicious of outcomes (see following section), but definitely support closures that are not permanent. In the Eastern Channel, French fishermen were in favour of biologically based closures, provided compensation was available. In the Azores however, there is little support for RTC as most fishers argue that it would result in closing all fishing grounds. However most fishermen that were interviewed support the biological seasonal closure of blackspot seabream that has been implemented in the Azores since 2015. In the Balearics, spatio-temporal closures, together with selectivity improvements, are thought to be the main management tools to avoid discards.

Quota management

Use of the quota system was mentioned by respondents in a number of the fisheries examined. However, there was no consensus on HOW changes in quota management would help, with different suggestions from each fishery. A broad conclusion might be that fishermen definitely see quota management as a potential mitigation measure, but are not entirely sure how this might work. ITQs were also mentioned by French and Azorean fishermen. Irish fishermen suggested that the monthly quotas could be extended to 2 or 3 months to allow less pressure from choke species. They also proposed quota being pooled across a number of vessels. Although very difficult to see how it would work, they also suggested that unused national quotas should be redistributed to countries with issues. French fishers find that quotas of some species (mackerel, herring) were “given” to foreigner owners (French/Dutch owner) and this is considered as unfair as French owners practised discards. Very few complain about the amount of French quota except for some species that France has low quota for like “skate”. But some fishermen, especially in Boulogne, think that an individual quota system could be better than collective amount of quota share by POs on the historical records of each boat. IVQ could be exchanged directly between owners without going through PO system. Nowadays, quotas exchange are managed by POs and with the agreement of national authorities. There was a strong impression from Irish fishermen that they were really fed up with the current quota management system in Ireland as well as the LO. They seemed attracted to an effort based management system. It is interesting to note that in the Mediterranean, in contrast, fishermen are actually using a sort of quota based approaches where none existed before. The most obvious consensus from the interviews might be that certainly in Denmark and Ireland, and probably in the Balearics, the current management, whatever it might be has little credibility with the fishermen, and that they would seriously wish to explore newer, and probably more flexible approaches. Individual fishers have very little knowledge about LO and even less about its impact on their activity. This lack of knowledge makes difficult for the formulation of any mitigation or adaptation strategies except those proposed by their organisations such as “more selective gear”. For example, the notion of choke species is not understood yet by French fishers. Only POs and Fisheries Committees tend to speak about it. Nobody contested the current quota system based on historical rights.

By clicking on the orange bullet you will get Fishermen interviews. Material is based on WP4.1 Delivrable

Citation :

Fiche Are you interested in additional management methods to avoid unwanted catch ?, Author(s) : Dave Reid


DiscardLess Atlas [on line]. 2017. Reid et al., 2017. DiscardLess Deliverable D4.1: Initial avoidance manuals by case study including tactical, strategic and gear based approaches agreed by scientists and fishers. http://www.discardless.eu/fishermen_story