Technology for small-scale fishermen - the way ahead.

This post from Maraia Damanki comes just after Succorfish announced their brand new solution to allowing fishermen to record, store and upload their catch data live at sea. Developed specifically for industry by SuccorfishM2M, Catch App is a revolutionary new, online fisheries app that answers a growing need for much improved data collection and recording tools within the global fisheries community. 

One of the Catch App screens

There are a growing number of examples worldwide where fishermen are working together to record, store and share their catch data in order to prove the sustainability of their fishery. In South Australia, a group of fishermen in an entire region collected and collated data that they then subsequently used to persuade the equivalent of our MMO that they were fishing sustainably.

"This week, I joined colleagues and partners at the Seaweb Seafood Summit in New Orleans, Louisiana to discuss sustainable seafood and fisheries. A consistent theme emerged: technology and innovation is opening new doors for small-scale fisheries.

Small-scale fisheries account for a full 80 percent of the world’s fish catch, and play a critical role in the livelihoods of millions of people, particularly in the developing world. But most of their catch comes from fisheries that are poorly managed, overfished and have little access to the growing market for sustainable seafood.

In many of these places, fishermen lack the knowledge and incentives for more sustainable use of their fisheries, and compete for the remaining fish in open-access fishing grounds. These fisheries lack basic data on how many fish there are, how hard they are being fished, and what level of fishing pressure they can withstand — data essential for sustainable management.

During the Seafood Summit, we explored concrete examples of technology and co-management arrangements that are bringing fishermen, seafood buyers, distributors, and non-governmental organizations together in Chile, Indonesia and the United States.

Through innovative solutions for data collection, traceability methods and market access these places are seeing a transformation in the way fishermen fish, manage fisheries and sell their product — offering incentives for a more sustainable future.

Take Chile for example. Last year, two fishing communities began using a new traceability system on their boats that collects data on where and when fishing is taking place (to ensure catch within boundaries and within open seasons), and what gear is used. As a result of this new system, a Chilean seafood company made a first purchase of mussels from the participating fishermen. Now, the buyer is expected to place additional orders, with a commitment to pay a premium price for the more sustainable product.

From traceability in Chile, to fishermen using iPads in California to track and share information on bycatch, to communities in Indonesia putting in place new systems for assessing fish stocks, technology is helping forge new alliances across sectors, opening markets, and empowering fishing communities — with sustainability as the outcome.

Now it is time to scale up these good initiatives!

Working together, we can improve the health of the world’s fisheries as well as the fishermen and communities who depend on them."

Maria Damanaki is Global Managing Director for Oceans at The Nature Conservancy. Follow Maria on Twitter @Damanaki.

Learn more about what The Nature Conservancy is doing to help improve the health of the world’s fisheries.

How do small-scale fishers adapt to environmental variability?

Here's an excellent paper looking at the consequences of small-scale fishermen in the wider market place - the story may be form the USA but much of the context and content mirror our small-scale fishing communities in the UK.

The paper's abstract reads:

"Many fisheries stocks and the livelihoods of those who make their living from fishing are in decline, and these declines are exacerbated by uncertainties associated with increased climate variability and change. Social scientists have long documented the importance of mobility and diversification in reducing the risk and uncertainty associated with climate variability, particularly in the context of small-scale fishing. However, it is unclear how these traditional mechanisms are buffering fishers against the varied stressors they currently face, including those associated with environmental variability. This paper examines how fishers on the southern gulf coast of the Mexican state of Baja California Sur perceive and respond to stressors associated with normal environmental variability, how their ability to adapt is spatially distributed, and what threats they perceive to their continued ability to adapt. Understanding the adaptation strategies and everyday vulnerabilities that fishers face can elucidate problems associated with current fisheries management and the underlying factors that cause vulnerability, and also help decision makers, including fishers themselves, develop more effective adaptation strategies in the face of climate change."

The full paper can be read here: 

If you can, work with them!

Michelin Star seafood chef, Mitch Tonks, explains how fishermen can work with chefs to make their product more profitable.

Fishing is a complicated and hard job and downtime off the water means no money coming in so that desire to land and return to sea must be a natural one. I wonder how many fishermen think about their product beyond the quayside and think about how they can add value to the catch by doing things differently. From the fisherman's perspective what is there that can be done?

But from the chefs perspective there may be things.

I was in Australia filming a few years back and looking at how fishermen had coped with the huge controls placed on fishing and still made a living; the answer was simple, if I catch less, I need to charge more. Some fishermen worked with chefs in seeing what it is they wanted. The best example I saw was a snapper fishermen who had gone from catching big volume to very small, he got to understand that the levels of quality directly affected his price and gradually progressed to instead of landing the fish on board and icing them, he killed each one with a spike through the head (an old Japanese method) then placed the fish in iced slurry, the fish were in the best condition they could be and their prices rocketed on Tsukiji and Sydney market, other examples were crab and lobster fishermen making bespoke products for chefs like lobster medallions, their investment was in taking the time to understand and using their expert knowledge to develop specific pieces of equipment to freeze and process fish.

This progress was made by fishermen and the end user talking together and understanding better each other’s needs. It would be a good forum to get likeminded chefs and retailers together to chat and help each other see beyond and past the quayside.

Bass by-catches - the realities of bass 'conservation'.

Peter Caunter operates an under-10m vessel, netting off the south east coast.. In this short article he provides an insight into the some of the realities of the bass fishery in his area.

The Realities of Bass Conservation

Photos of bass by-catch hauls using 100mm sole trammel nets by Peter Caunter

The attached photo is taken of a typical days catch from my vessel during last year’s spring fishery. I use 100mm sole trammel nets: please note the amount of bass.

Two points of significance: In this fishery bass can't be avoided and would have to be discarded if a moratorium on bass comes in force. Secondly, bass in my area have increased over the last few years from just odd fish some times, perhaps half a box of mainly small fish, to three, sometimes four or five boxes of large mature fish suggesting a large increase in the stock, not the drastic decrease claimed. I have fished the same spot, shooting the nets from March to June on the same tracks for over twenty years now so have a good knowledge of fluctuations in the local stocks.

This year’s O group recruitment is reported to be very good, this is backed up to me by a friend whose eel fluke nets have been clogged by thumb nail sized bass at the top of the river Stour this summer. This at least raises questions about the the evidence to justify the draconian measures the EU are threatening to put in place.

In my mind it is non- negotiable that what is in place is already way over the top as it is and not another single restriction should be even discussed .

The increase in landing size to 42cm earlier this year, has effectively closed down all inshore and estuary fisheries in the Stour and Orwell upper Thames and Medway estuaries, (along with traditional small fish fisheries like the Solent and many such places all around the UK) as 99% of bass targeted in these waters would have been under 42 cm. With a ton a month restricting the higher catchers and juvenile bass protected EU wide what more could possibly be needed ?

Full story courtesy of the NFFO.

Fishing ports like Newlyn never stop - last night the Twilight III has a scrub-down on the slip...

while the Intuition with cap'n Nudd Jnr at the helm makes a landing...

of brown crab...

to a waiting vivier lorry...

by the fish market...

while on a bust mid-week market this morning there is a good mix of quality fish like these lovely lemons...

gorgeous gurnards...

prime plaice...

and, unusually, a box of Dover sole cousins the sand sole...

and some very sandy scallops...

cuttlefish fishing means that some fish get lagged in sepia ink...

while the mackerel shine brightly...

these turbot make premium money this morning....

but it is the black gold that makes up the bulk of the beamer trips by weight...

while netters like the Ajax put ashore big trips of hake...

and the odd JD thrown in for good measure...

as the dawn breaks the fish are taken away...

to be loaded on to the waiting transport in the lorry park...

while a few of the boats get crew arriving down the quay...

like this visiting Falmouth scalloper Golden promise...

there's only Joy missing here...

the dawn looks a little showery in the strong NW breeze...

even the Crystal Sea II has taken the night off...

while the crabbers...

wait their turn to sale...

it promises to be a fresh day out there...

which will mean Tom will have to be extra vigilant.

Research finds trawling not as devastating as often portrayed.

An ongoing two-year independent study on trawling and its effect on benthic sea life -- species that live on sea floors where trawling occurs – has found that the practice may not be as devastating as it is portrayed by some NGOs.

The study called, 'Trawling: Finding Common Ground on the Scientific Knowledge Regarding Best Practices', is being funded by the Walton Foundation and the Packard Foundation in partnership with the National Fisheries Institute, and is being done by a group of international scientists who are collecting and assessing data of global sea floors where trawling occurs.

The major data collection and analysis for the project has been completed, including assessments of mobile bottom contact gear in Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Argentina, South Africa and most of the US, making it six times more extensive than and previous compilations.

According to Ricardo Amoroso of the University of Washington, who presented the data at this year’s Pacific Marine Expo in Seattle, public perception of trawling is often negative. Common public beliefs include the equivalent of 10 football fields are trawled every four seconds and that trawling is turning the seafloor into a desert.

"What we want to do with this project is actually contract these perceptions with data," he said.

A major problem, Amoroso said, is that data are often represented by low resolution square cells, each representing several hundred kilometers.

"It's the way that local management agencies are collecting the data, but this is problematic in terms of trying to assess the footprint," he said.

Within each one of these cells there is a wide range of fishing activity, with some areas being heavily trawled and others remaining virtually untouched.

One important aspect of this report, Amoroso said, was to represent the data using the highest resolution possible, mostly at 1 kilometer squared, in order to get a more accurate representation of how much of the seafloor was being trawled.

“When we use one square kilometer resolution our perception is that 70% of the area has never been trawled, as soon as we change the resolution to 10km, 50% of the area has been untrawled, and if we change the resolution to 40 square kilometers, only 30% has never been trawled,” he said.

The team found that trawling tends to be highly concentrated, rather than widespread and in fisheries where they have data, they have found that trawling is either declining or is stable.

"Aggregated" - AIS track record of a year's fishing activity west of the Scillys on the North West banks.

“Is trawling everywhere? Nope, fishing efforts tend to be very aggregated in very specific places…is the footprint of trawling increasing globally? There are many places in the world where we don’t have data, but for the places where we do have data, we have seen that management has absolutely been able to stabilize or reduce fishing pressure,” Amoroso said, negating the list of common misperceptions he began his presentation with.



“We know trawling is an efficient way to fish and we need to feed the planet, so in that context it’s a very positive activity…for those that are responsible for protecting the integrity of these [habitats], virtually any change is unacceptable…I think in reality the answer is somewhere in the middle,” he said.

Full story here www.undercurrentnews.com:

The great Cardigan Bay scallop debate following the world’s largest ever fishing impact study.

Showing no signs of let up after the publication by George Monbiot in the Guardian of an article refuting the sense of allowing scallop fishing in Cardigan Bay off the Welsh coast and there is now an open and frank exchange of views rattling across social media networks.

The story so far:

Scientists from Bangor University, working together with the Welsh Fishermen’s Association, Welsh Government and Natural Resources Wales have published their findings from the world’s largest ever fishing impact study, funded in part by the European Fishery Fund.
Cardigan Bay Special Area of Conservation (SAC) was closed to scallop fishing in 2009. Research led by Bangor University has focused on understanding the amount of scallop fishing within the SAC that would be considered sustainable and that would not damage the conservation features of the area.
To do this, the team spent 18 months preparing to undertake a mammoth fishing experiment in which 12 different sites were fished at different intensities by commercial boats. The results of the fishing were compared to four areas left unfished. Having now established that the area can withstand a certain level of fishing, the next step in the work is to provide more information to further guide the agencies responsible to decide on future management measures, and if appropriate, for setting the level of fishing to be permitted. 

Professor Michel Kaiser who leads the Fisheries & Conservation Science Group at Bangor University's School of Ocean Sciences said:

“This is the first study of its kind that provides information that would enable us to advise on the amount of fishing that the seabed within the SAC can tolerate, it provides the basis for a truly ecosystem based approach to management of a potential fishery in the area.”Most fisheries are managed according the target species, in this case scallops. Setting two thresholds, one for seabed disturbance and one for scallops would provide a strong incentive for fishermen to disturb as little of the seabed as possible.

Dr Gwladys Lambert who led the research said: “We learnt a huge amount from this study and we know that Cardigan Bay is very resilient to  scallop dredging but we now know precisely how much fishing can be considered to be sustainable. None of this would have been possible without the collaboration of the fishing industry and processors who worked incredibly hard to help us achieve this unique piece of science.” Relevant reports 59, 60 and 61 can be found at here. Publication date: 13 August 2015

- See more at: http://www.bangor.ac.uk/news/latest/world-s-largest-ever-fishing-impact-study-brings-hope-for-cardigan-bay-scallop-fishermen-23653#sthash.QCBC6fcp.dpuf


George Mobnbiot's response in the Guradian is here:
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/georgemonbiot/2015/nov/09/allowing-scallop-dredging-in-strictly-protected-dolphin-reserves-is-madness



Subsequently, Mark Roberts - a scallop fisherman for twenty seven years who has worked the very grounds in at the centre of the study year-on-year questions Monbiot's logic - read on...

(click to enlarge)

(click to enlarge)

Since then the scientists who were responsible for the paper have added their own response from comments by 

Comment by Michel J. Kaiser, Jan Geert Hiddink & Gwladys Lambert

"Will Scallop Dredging in Cardigan Bay be an Environmental Disaster?"

Posted on November 23, 2015

Recently in the UK, George Monbiot, a well-known environmental journalist, criticised the Welsh Government for undertaking a public consultation about the possibility of allowing restricted amounts of scallop dredging (dragging nets along the bottom) within a legally protected marine conservation zone. In particular, Monbiot used a quote from Callum Roberts at the University of York to imply that the scientific study which led to this consultation was flawed.

To read the full response click here:


There is currently an open call for discussion and response online - all are encouraged to respond.

The Minister for Natural Resources has launched a consultation entitled ‘Proposed New Management Measures for the Scallop Fishery in Cardigan Bay’.

Start of consultation:14/10/2015

End of consultation:05/01/2016

http://gov.wales/consultations/environmentandcountryside/proposed-new-management-measures-for-the-scallop-fishery-in-cardigan-bay/?lang=en