#MMO scrutinised by the HoC Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee

Committee Room 16 Meeting starts on Wednesday 21 January at 3pm

Work of the Committee (MMO) 2010-15

Witnesses:

Sir Bill Callaghan, Chair, 
John Tuckett, Chief Executive Officer
Andrew Beattie, Acting Chief Executive Officer, Marine Management Organisation

Ban ring netting! - lets just choose to ignore the science!

133 Through the Gaps readers kindly completed the short survey question posted at the top of the blog after the MSC downgraded mackerel in the light of the EU and Iceland to agree to operate to quota limits.

129 voted they would continue to buy line caught mackerel, 4 objected!

This survey should give some hope for local hand line fishermen who were outraged - rightly so as they were being dragged into a fight that had no relevance to them and their method of fishing for mackerel. Eventually, the MMO and MSC came out in support of the hand line fishers here in the south west along with fish chefs like Nathan Outlaw saying he would continue to keep mackerel o the menu as it was caught locally by hand line.

Though the Cornishman newspaper managed to find one unhappy reader sufficiently incensed to pen a letter of protest about the ring net fleet operating out of Newlyn - read on:

This letter appeared in the local Cornishman newspaper last week.

Hopefully, most of the readers of the Cornishman are better informed and have a wider understanding of the ring net method of fishing than D Howard of Newlyn.

Below, are extracts from the well documented assessment procedure and accreditation process from the MSC - the body that manages every certified stock in the world.

It took over five years of hard work and research to establish the fishery with PGI (Protected Geographical Indication) status in 2009 - Cornish Sardines - there is a web site dedicated to the Cornish Sardine Management Association where information on the method and fish can be found.

The fishery was subsequently accredited with MSC status -  as a sustainable fishery in 2010. Cornwall’s iconic sardine fishery has passed its Marine Stewardship Council assessment and been certified as a sustainable and well-managed fishery. The fishery – which recently gained European geographic designation as ‘Cornish Sardines’ can now add the MSC ecolabel to its products.

The Cornish sardine fleet currently consists of 6 vessels using ring nets and a further 10 vessels catching sardines with drift nets. Boats sail mainly from Newlyn and Mevagissey and stay in inshore waters – within six miles of land. The sardines they catch are significantly larger than the minimum size allowed and are proving popular with restaurants and retailers.

Jon Harman, Development Director for Seafish says: “Seafish helped fund the development of a tool to help assess the stock status of the data-deficient Cornish sardine fishery. We recognised the need to trial a tool, to an international standard, for fisheries facing challenges in the amount of data available. This was an important stepping stone to MSC certification and we are pleased that Cornish sardines have now been approved to MSC standard after being reviewed by this new process.”

Catch levels of pilchards into Newlyn and Mevagissey from Defra records have been less than 100 tonnes between 1999 and 2003, while latest figures indicate catches of around 870 tonnes between January and September 2009 (MFA Monthly returns of sea fisheries statistics for England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, September 2009). A rough estimate of the maximum fishing mortality would therefore be less than 0.15, i.e. less than 50% of natural mortality estimates (0.33, as used by ICES). It is therefore highly likely that fishing mortality is below FMSY (reference point from the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD)). The ICES stock evaluation in 2008 mirror the results of the PELGAS surveys, highlighting a decline in biomass due to bad recruitments in 2004 and 2005, but good recruitments in 2006 and 2007 which should subsequently increase biomass levels. The opinion of an underexploited stock is also supported by the ICES working group report, which shows that the demographic structure of sardine is not truncated, with all age groups represented in the population

The Performance of the Cornish Sardine fishery in relation to MSC Principles 1, 2 and 3 is summarised below:

MSC Principle Fishery Performance Principle 1: Sustainability of Exploited Stock Overall: 80.0 Principle 2: Maintenance of Ecosystem Overall: 84.3 Principle 3: Effective Management System Overall: 83.9
The fishery attained a score of 80 or more against each of the MSC Principles. The MRAG Americas Assessment Team, therefore, recommends that the Cornish Sardine Ring Net and Drift Net Fishery pass certification according to the Marine Stewardship Council Principles and Criteria for Sustainable Fisheries.

Following this Recommendation of the assessment team, and review by stakeholders and peer-reviewers, a determination is hereby made by the MRAG Americas Certification Committee (MACC) to certify the fishery.

In either case the current state of this stock is good and therefore there is low risk for the assessment of status for the Cornish sardine.

Going back to the letter - which is obviously at odds with the data and stock research carried out by the MSC - there are also a number of other inaccurate observations. These are more heinous as they are both misleading and indeed totally inaccurate.

The ring net boats involved are the catamaran,

 Lyonesse...

the Asthore...

the Resolute...

the White Heather...

and the Little Pearl - the net she works is 203m long - some simple maths determines that when the net is 'shot' it encircles an area of 64m² (that's the diameter of 205 divided by pi or 22/7) 

It should be obvious, from the size of these boats, that they are incapable of working a net 'miles long' as is stated in the letter. 

The video below shows the fleet fishing close to Newlyn early one evening a few years ago...

If you look carefully you can see the full extent of the net being worked.

Pathway and Lunar Bow

These are among the biggest kind of 'ring net' type boat in the UK fleet - though the boats seldom work this kind of net (purse seine) today preferring mid-water trawls to catch pelagic fish like mackerel and herring. Even in their case....

"The fish are then pumped or brailed aboard the vessel. A large purse seine can be as long as 1 kilometre and 200 metres deep."

These boats are huge and even then the net is a fraction of a mile in length!

The staff at the local MMO office would also be most interested to know that there are "miles of gill nets" being used in the Bay. To the best of my knowledge no inshore fishermen has ever caught cormorants or any diving birds in their nets - where most of the boats work the Bay is too deep!

Lastly, this shot was taken near Battery Rocks not so long ago. Cormorants, a plenty!

MMO and Mcs redeem mackerel madness!

MCS UK has confirmed #mackerel advice does not apply to south west handline mackerel, one of England's most #sustainable fishing methods!

MCSUK ‏@mcsuk

@The_MMO Handline is certainly most sustainable and least damaging option. See our listings for more detail:http://bit.ly/SuMVND 

Just when the TV and media went into a spin over the downgrading of mackerel from being OK to eat on a regular basis to seldom comes a swift response from the #MMO and Msc - South West handline mackerel can be consumed as and when! Vicory for #common-sense and the guys who fish by hand!

Slipper Skippers! - Mystery cartels who control price of British-caught fish.

Here's an article published February 14th in the Times by David Sanderson. The story of how quotas, which were once allocated to individual fishermen are now traded on a global market worth millions - but very often no longer owned by individual fishermen is another story of intervention gone wrong - perhaps there was never a better example of the law of unintended consequences! 


Read on........

The Government allocates quotas, but loses track of them as they are sold to 'barons' interested only in profit!

The price of fish is being inflated by private organisations that have been given free access to quotas worth billions of pounds and are on the brink of securing permanent control of Britain's fishing rights. 

The Government has admitted that Britain's 23 privately run Fish Producer Organisations (FPOs), to whom it hands 94 per cent of the country's annual quota, manipulate the market to boost their profits. Fish prices increased by 11.4 per cent in the year to June 2011, twice the increase in meat prices, according to the Office for National Statistics. But despite concerns that the opaque yet highly lucrative market is now being controlled by "quota barons", including investment funds, the Government has resisted calls to publish a register of ownership. It concedes that it does not know who owns and profits from Britain's quota allocation because of "invisible" transfers within FPOs: many members lease out their allowance at huge profit. The Government also admits that the quota rights — originally attached to vessels fishing in British waters in the late 20th century — may end up permanently in the hands of the FPOs, who it says now have a "legitimate expectation" of ownership. 

Critics have described it as a "privatisation of the seas" without any benefit to the Exchequer.In 2010 the value of the 606,000 tonnes of fish landed by British vessels was £719 million; the leasing of a one-tonne quota of cod can fetch up to £2,500. Anne McIntosh, the Conservative MP who is chairman of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Select Committee, said it was astonishing that the Government did not know who owned the quotas it handed out. She called for the Government to publish a register, adding that it was not in the country's interests for fishing rights to be owned by non-fishermen. 

Peter Aldous, the MP for Waveney, which includes the fishing port of Lowestoft, described it as a scandal. He said that reform of the system would be difficult because of the "powerful vested interests that will resist change". 

The current system of quota allocation has also resulted in fishermen with boats of less than 10m (33ft) being denied access to the seas. They comprise 85 per cent of the UK fleet yet receive only 4 per cent of the annual quota as they are usually excluded from FPOs. If the owners of smaller boats want a share of the quota, they usually have to rent it from FPOs, but many said they could not afford the price demanded. Even if they could, FPOs are not offering shares to them. The small boat owners claim that the system forces them to discard tonnes of fish. 

Jerry Percy, the chairman of the New Under Ten Fishermen's Association, said that the Government had allowed the "family silver" to be taken away from working fishermen. "Nobody except the Producer Organisations know what's going on," he said. "It could be hedge funds, big international companies or even football clubs that are holding the quota and making money." Thomas Appleby, a law lecturer at the University of the West of England who has been trying to discover who owns Britain's quota, said a small group of wealthy people were renting out "public property" for profit. He said the Marine Management Organisation, the quango administering fishing, rejected his latest request for information but said that although the Government did "retain ownership of fish quotas ... the industry has an established legitimate expectation for access". "They now view it as theirs," Mr Appleby said. "But the Exchequer is losing out because usually when you privatise assets the public is compensated." He added: "Because we have FPOs trading among themselves and forming cartels, there's an element that they are controlling geographic areas. 

There could be abuse of a dominant position, which would be bad news for the consumer." Richard Benyon, the Environment Minister, acknowledged to the select committee that FPOs would restrict supply of quota to the under-10m sector.In a statement his department said that it would keep quota back for commercial reasons, including "to increase the prices obtained by their members for the quota they do land". Jim Portus, chairman of the UK Association of Fish Producer Organisations, defended the system. He said the organisations were not "secret", adding that the FPOs had been pushing Defra to publish a register. He said that any flaws in the system were because of "ministerial inefficiency". 

A spokesman for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said it was "seeking a publicly available register of quota allocations". 'Slipper skippers' reel in the net profits.

The Marine Management Organisation, a government quango, administers the scheme but admits that many transactions within and between the fish producer organisations are invisible to it. This has led to speculation that investment companies and even football clubs now own FQAs, which they lease out for profit. Currently, some 96 per cent of the British allowable catch goes to the 23 FPOs. (One of these is the Cornish Fish Producers Organisation who manage the quotas for the majority of Newlyn and other Cornish vessels)

The remainder is distributed by the Marine Management Organisation, for free, to the small-ship fleet. In 2010, Britain had 6,477 registered fishing vessels — a reduction of 16 per cent from 2001. More than 5,000 of these were in the under-10m fleet. In the same year these vessels landed 606,000 tonnes of sea fish (including shellfish, which are not subject to quotas), valued at £719 million. The price of leasing fixed quota allocations varies depending on the fish stock, the time of year and the section of British coastal waters it has been allocated to.

In response, French fishing consultant Yan Giron gives his view from across the Channel - he is keen to point out that he is making an observation on the findings as they are of real relevance to the place the French operators find themselves - that is from the artisan fishermen's perspective

I am not involved in day-to-day UK fish system, but here are some views given from the other side of the Channel (how we see the FQA system and its consequences) After having read again this hot issue, hot for Britain and hot for whole EU because FQAs are ITQs of TFCs, and that is what EC want for everybody: - truly, the role of FQA in discarding is real for me and minimized in public debate regarding this issue. I am glad to see that written in fair words. And this makes us read differently Commission wish to implement both an overall ITQs system AND an overall discard ban. Otherwise, they cannot promote ITQs in multi-specific fisheries.

I wrote a tribune in Le Marin, our professional newspaper month ago. - Problem of FQA is not new, and ITQs too. I think there is a huge gap between neo-liberal economy principles and reality. ITQs promoter think that they let rule the fishing activity through the market forces. But, it means they have to follow economical rules, and one major is fair competition and no underneath constraints. BUT, they are in fact 2 markets working with close links and under constraints: the quota market and the landed fish market. And underneath constraints are strong: constraints to fish, access to fisheries, KW and GTU management, even composition of catches in mixed fisheries and implementation or not of a ban on discards.

Last point is huge too : you can’t catch your most valuable fish if you don’t have also low valuable fish quota. And you may pay the highest prices for these low value fish quota, especially if you absolutely need them to catch the good price fish, and if they are scarce. - Impact of speculation is thus huge. They wrote : price of cod quota :up to £/kg 2.5. It is a quota given to a species, not to the size of fish. Prices of landed cod range between £/kg2 to 4, depending on size of fish. Now consider all the value taken from your catches, I have dock rumours which said fish quota leasing accounts now around 50% of the fish value or catching expenses…. And you have to take out fuel expenses, etc.

Without a ban discard, you have no choice: you have to high grade / discard. With a ban discard, and with no improve of selectivity, you are economically dead. 

(He goes on to raise some further questions following the logical conclusion of the current line of thinking)

Is this what Europe want ?Artificially increase the catching expenditures ? without an economical return for the fishing boats ? How do you want to self finance modernisation and day-to-day profitability? Windsail your fishing boat (he's having a go Yan! ed) and recruit low cost manpower ? We may find cheap Libyan and Egyptian manpower. I have nothing against foreign crew, but we also have employment to safeguard.

NEW DATA NOW AVAILABLE TO VIEW ON THE MARINE PLANNING PORTAL

More data has now been added to the Marine Management Organisation’s interactive and online map.

Once registered, users can select (fixed and mobile fishing gear and intensity) and then use the boxes to add comments directly to the web site.

Be sure to register with the marine planning portal which allows anyone logging on to view a range of information and locations – from details of wind farm developments to conservation areas - even fishing operations – and understand how busy our seas have become.


New information has just gone live for the following uses:

· Marine Protected Areas

· Defence and national security 

· Energy production and infrastructure development

· Ports and shipping

· Marine aggregates

· Marine dredging and disposal

· Subsea cables

· Fishing activity

· Aquaculture

· Tourism and recreation

· Marine ecology and biodiversity

· Historic environment.

Plan-making is already underway in the East Offshore and East Inshore marine plan areas - from Flamborough Head to Felixstowe – with a total of 10 marine plans to be drawn up for England over the next decade to inform and guide marine regulators and users.


The planning portal offers an easy way to be involved and contribute to marine planning. Using the controls, you can locate and then zoom in on particular areas or activities by selecting the specific data you want to see. You can also post comments and make suggestions on new data or information to inform the plans in the East of England, which are expected to take two years to finalise.


We hope as many people as possible will get online, look at the map and share any insights they may have on the evidence we will be using. The MMO will also be running a series of workshops in the East of England over the coming year which will provide opportunities for others, including those who are not online, to have their say.


You can also contact the planning team by telephone on 0191 376 2790, or email: planning@marinemanagement.org.uk

CFPO news - NFFO elects new chairman Paul Trebilcock.

Cornwall Fish Producers Organisation stalwart, Paul Trebilcock.

NFFO Elects New Chairman

The NFFO has elected Paul Trebilcock, Chief Executive of the Cornish Fish Producers’ Organisation as its new Chairman. Paul will take over the Chair next summer and in the meantime will hold the position of NFFO Chairman-Elect.

“Paul is the well-known and highly active Chief Executive of the Cornish PO and although he is probably the youngest Chairman that we have had, he comes with a wealth of experience”, said current Chairman Arnold Locker.

“We try to ensure that if we have a North Sea President, we have an Area VII Chairman and this appointment continues that useful balance”.

“Paul will be taking over at a truly critical time for our industry, with CFP reform, marine conservation zones and other vital decisions taken on his watch”.

Last week the NFFO met with the MMO for the first time to discuss a wide range of operational policing and monitoring issues.

Wide Range of Issues addressed at meeting with MMO

THE National Federation of Fishermen’s Organisations (NFFO)  and the Marine Management Organisation (MMO) met recently at the MMO’s headquarters in Newcastle.

The NFFO said that a wide range of issues were covered including

• The design application and enforcement of management measures within marine conservation zones and special areas of conservation
• Electronic logbooks, including the development and availability of an integrated VMS/e-logbook system
• The performance of the English EFF programme
• Progress in implementing the new EU Control Regulation, including the weighing of catch provisions, 10% margin of tolerance, engine power measurement and the marking of pots
•  The application of Fisheries Administrative penalties
• New MMO arrangements to ensure that all infringements are dealt with in a timely and consistent way
•  Delivery and practicality issues associated with the Defra consultation on the future of under-10m quota management
• The MMO’s compliance and enforcement strategy
• Voluntary net tagging that could potentially reduce the impact of boardings at sea
• The impact of boardings on fishing operations

The NFFO said: “The NFFO and the MMO are agreed that there is a continued need  for pragmatic and proportionate enforcement that, so far as possible, separates minor infringements from determined and recurrent rule-breaking. Fisheries Administrative Penalties have helped to streamline the process and a new system of monthly reviews of all fisheries offences is being implemented to bring consistency and to ensure that prosecutions if they are to happen are brought forward in a timely fashion.

“The NFFO gave examples of boardings at sea which could have  been handled with greater regard  for fishing operations and the MMO welcomed this feedback. . It was agreed to reinstate liaison days with the Royal Navy’s Fisheries Protection Squadron, with port visits by fisheries protection vessels in the Irish Sea, Shoreham and Hartlepool.  The potential for repeated prosecutions for infringement of the 10% margin of tolerance –particularly for small quantities - was raised and the need for a reasonable, pragmatic and risk based approach was underlined by the Federation.

“It was agreed to discuss further the details of a voluntary net tagging scheme which potentially could reduce the time and anxiety of net measurements at sea.

“The navigational chaos that could result from implementation of the new Control Regulation requirements on flags, radar reflectors and lights on dhans marking pots was emphasised. The huge cost and navigational consequences of vessels confronting a ‘city of light’ and a ‘snowstorm of radar signals’ underlined the need for a practical solution.

“The Federation said that this  was a constructive meeting which aimed to make the best out of a management system that is over-complex, in places fundamentally irrational, and certainly far removed from the practicalities of fishing; but is the law - until that law can be changed. The MMO has faced a difficult baptism of fire but the meeting showed that there is at least a strong will to temper the rough edges of the CFP without abandoning the core purpose of enforcing fisheries regulations.

The Federation will be meeting the MMO to continue this dialogue at regular intervals.”