Bringing the Oceans Back to Life

Fishermen and women in Belize, the Philippines and Spain along with EDF staff tell the story of our partnerships to improve livelihoods, feed more people and bring the oceans back to life

Monday morning

Big seas over the weekend brought even some of the bigger boats back to port for Monday's market...

with around 600 boxes from beam trawlers and some inshore boats that braved the heavy seas on Sunday...

more than enough to keep Cefas data collection on track...

some big seasonal bass...

cracking gurnards...

the odd John dory...

and even more sinister fish on the market floor...

with plenty of mackerel for those in the right place at the right time...

the megrims...

came stacked four high for the Sapphire II...

there's two sides to every flatfish...

bass...

mackerel...

herring...

and mullet were all targeted by the inshore boats over the weekend...

with a handful of the bigger sizes...

the fish came from far and wide...

at this time of year it's hard not to target Brixham squid......

the rain was incessant overnight...

making the job of repairing gear all the more uncomfortable.

Penzance sailing club dinghy racing - in a heavy swell.

Although the wind had dropped from the storm force strength overnight there was a heavy swell running in Mount's Bay to be enjoyed by the dinghy racing section of Penzance Sailing Club.

The weekend in Mount's Bay and Newlyn.

Despite the poor forecast, heralding the arrival of Angus, the first named storm of the ear which promises storm for 9 and severe storm force 10 winds, the fleet are queuing up to take ice...

though the classic sailing boat, Irene is waiting to sail...

the wind is beginning to gust already...

surplus to requirements, some grown timber not used in the refit of the wooden-hulled Galilee...

boxes and ice going aboard the Lisa Jacqueline...

Sunday morning and the Filadelfia heads back into port...

looking like new, the Algrie is almost ready to get back to sea after her nine month lay-up...

Irene about to set sail...

the new wheelhouse is now in place on Rowse's new crabber...

over in Penzance the Sunday morning dinghy sailors get in some sailing following the storm...

making the most of the fresh breeze and heavy swell...

tied up for the winter, the luggers Barnabus and Happy Return...

also tied up for the winter is the Scillonian III having her winter overhaul in the wet dock...

Forever Autumn, in the dock.

Day 7: Last day aboard the Aalskerre for Sky News reporter, Joe Tidy.

Sky News reporter, Joe Tidy spent a week at sea aboard the 33m whitefish trawler Aalskerre fishing off the Norwegian coast - talking Brexit with the skipper and crew.

Day 7: The life of a deep-sea trawlerman can be tough on the family. The six men from the Orkney area of Scotland all have wives or girlfriends and kids waiting for them back home. Ship cool Ryan is the youngest on board (hence why he is cook - they call him the "Passionate Chef", ironically). He says "leaving the house is the hardest part of the job".

But it's a job he can't imagine ever leaving. This despite personal experience of disaster and tragedy at sea. He and his brother sank their boat after hitting rocks in 2008 and their father drowned at sea in 2011.

"Fishing is just in my blood," says Ryan. "It's a feeling echoed around dozens of fishing communities in the UK devoted through generations to the industry."

Since the 1970s it's an industry in decline with the landings of fish halving since then and the number of fishermen now standing at around 12,000. Brexit, many hope, will restore the industry to its former glory. But there's much the UK Government must deliver in terms of negotiations with Brussels before then.

Below, learning new editing skills at sea!

Editing on the North Sea is FUN... pic.twitter.com/FWB1msw8Jt

— Joe Tidy (@joetidy) November 18, 2016

Organisations work closely to develop a spurdog by-catch avoidance programme.

Following significant efforts by all involved, a by-catch allowance was secured that enabled further development of this novel approach to manage spurdog: eliminating high levels of dead discarding; reducing fishing mortality; continuing stock recovery; and avoiding a potential ‘choke’ species under the landing obligation.

Organisations involved:

• Cornish Fish Producers Organisation (CFPO)
• Cornish fishing fleet,
• Centre for Environment Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (Cefas)
• Department for the Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra),
• Shark Trust
• Marine Management Organisation (MMO)

"We are now moving to the next phase; expanding use of the spurdog by-catch reporting tool to 6 vessels, using a variety of gears such as trawls and nets, in the South West. This pilot project requires fishermen to provide real-time, daily reports of their spurdog by-catch, using a grid reference system. This information is used to produce advisory maps, using a ‘traffic-light’ system to inform fishers of areas where there is a risk of encountering this species. A 2 ton monthly by-catch allowance is permitted for those participating vessels. Only those spurdog that are dead at the moment when the fishing gear is hauled on board the vessel can be retained, landed and sold. Any spurdog encountered beyond this allocation has to be reported in line with the project requirements but cannot be retained and landed. Use of the reporting tool and uptake of the by-catch allowance will be closely monitored by the CFPO, MMO and Cefas."

The CFPO is also working closely with Cefas and the Shark Trust to train skippers in the operation of the daily reporting tool and handling of spurdog to maximise survivability. The Shark Trust has played an active role in producing a code of conduct and handling guide that the vessels will follow when engaged on this programme.

Full traceability through the supply chain will be achieved by the use of tallies attached to the boxes of spurdog prior to them being landed. The tallies will identify the dead spurdog that have been landed legally under this programme for onward sale.

As part of the selection process, those vessels selected have space on board to facilitate the appropriate handing of spurdog, represent the gear types known to interact with spurdog, and are able to submit daily reports when fishing.

The MMO have issued dispensation letters to the selected vessels taking part in the avoidance programme that allows those vessels to retain on-board and land dead spurdog.

If you would like any further information, please contact Cefas on 01502 527719 or CFPO on 01736 351050.

Further information on previous projects can be found at: A Spurdog Case Study; and the Spurdog Bycatch Avoidance Programme.

Latest Fishing Focus from Defra - special discards issue.

Fishing Focus is a marine newsletter published by Defra to keep stakeholders informed about the work they are doing.

MINOUW project from Claudia Amico on Vimeo.


Feature: the challenges of bycatch

In the fourth feature article in our series, we look at the field of bycatch of vulnerable and protected species: the issue itself, the work being done to monitor it, and the challenges for management.

Unintended mortalities:

We all know you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs, and so it is with most forms of food production: there is always some breakage or 'collateral damage'. In terrestrial systems this usually involves the substantial modification of the environment through farming, massive loss of biodiversity on farmland, and control of 'undesirable' or pest species.

Fishing, although arguably less destructive than farming, also impacts the environment in unintended ways. There are very few methods of harvesting marine life that don't affect non-target species in some way. This is an uncomfortable truth, but one we have to deal with in a world whose population is over seven billion and growing, and where 16% of the animal protein consumed globally comes from wild fish.

The unintended destruction of marine life as a consequence of fishing is often expressed in terms of waste: a waste of resources, potential or life. There is another more insidious concern as well, that pressure from fishing may accidentally push some vulnerable species towards extinction, or at the very least significantly impact their numbers or distribution. Examples are not hard to find, especially amongst the more iconic long-lived species that are particularly vulnerable to incidental capture during fishing operations. We usually refer to this as bycatch – the incidental capture of individuals that were not intended to be caught.

The effects of bycatch:

The recent extinction of the Yangtze River dolphin was brought about in large part through bycatch: frequent entanglement in longlines was one of the primary drivers of the species' extinction. The enigmatic vaquita (or the Gulf of California harbour porpoise), one of the smallest of all marine mammals, is now mainly confined to the Colorado River delta in the upper Gulf of California in Mexico. Numbers have been estimated at irregular intervals and the total population has dwindled from a few hundred in the 1980s to an alarming few tens of individuals at present. The species is known to be particularly vulnerable to bycatch in legal and illegal gillnet fisheries, and this is the main threat to their existence; it seems likely that the species could also soon be extinct as a consequence of bycatch.

It is not just literal extinction that is worrying. Bycatch can also lead to the commercial extinction of fish species (the species becomes so rare it is not possible to target it profitably), or to a species becoming absent from a part of its range due to extreme levels of bycatch. In European waters, fishes likes sturgeons and common skates have been affected in these ways, while harbour porpoises have been reduced to extremely low densities in parts of their European range, almost certainly as a result of bycatch.

The ecosystem approach:

The ecosystem approach to fisheries management​, championed by ICES and many other agencies, obliges us to consider the effects of bycatch on vulnerable species. Mammals, birds, turtles, and slow-growing fish species are all potentially vulnerable to the effects of bycatch. ICES has recently tried to get to grips with this issue through the work of a number of working groups.

First off, we need to understand the scale of any impact by quantifying the frequency with which vulnerable species might become caught. This will vary depending on the fishing gear being used, the fishery area, and season. Beyond that, we need to know enough about the abundance and population dynamics of all the species concerned to identify those for which bycatch levels may be too high. Finally, where bycatch levels are deemed to be too high, we need to find management measures that will reduce bycatch rates of vulnerable species.

Monitoring fisheries:

Increasingly both consumers and retailers demand to know where their food has come from and how it has been harvested and to understand the impacts that harvesting may have had on the environment. There is therefore a need to document fisheries and detail the nature and level of bycatch.

ICES Working Group on Bycatch of Protected Species (WGBYC) co-ordinates and collates these sorts of data from across the EU, and in the wider Atlantic. One important source of information comes from the implementation of European ​​Council Regulation 812/2004 on cetacean bycatch, which requires EU member states to monitor certain key fisheries for cetacean bycatch. Over the past ten years, these monitoring data have been submitted annually to the European Commission and to ICES. Additionally, on-board fish discard sampling schemes can, in some cases, also provide measures of bycatch rates of vulnerable species.

Some member states, recognizing the need to understand the wider impacts of fishing, have used their dedicated cetacean bycatch monitoring schemes to monitor all protected species bycatch. Slowly, WGBYC is building up a picture of both the susceptibility and the vulnerability of Protected, Endangered or Threatened Species (PETS) to fishing activity in many different fisheries throughout the EU.

One key issue under discussion is how EU member states should distribute sampling of fishing activities (by nation, area, gear type) in order to best inform the necessary risk assessment in a climate of financial restriction. We will need to improve, rationalize, and harmonize sampling to understand where the main risks to PET species at the population level are most likely to exist.

Defining reference levels:

Quantifying bycatch is not the only aim; reference levels – the minimum level of bycatch that might represent a conservation threat –​ are also needed to alert managers if and when management actions are required. Typically this involves figuring out a reference level. If this is exceeded, some management action is flagged.

Of course what is needed above all is a clear indication of what a 'conservation threat' looks like. Reference levels, and indeed officially recognized conservation targets, for most species other than cetaceans are lacking.

Indeed there is considerable uncertainty about the current conservation status or population size of many PET species. This all makes bycatch assessment a challenging task. In many situations, a risk based approach may be advisable.

A risk based approach to understanding PET species bycatch may aim to highlight likely problem species and areas, but it can also be used to pinpoint specific fisheries or areas where more sampling would be most effective in reducing uncertainty. Vulnerable bycatch species are usually caught in more than one fishery and in more than one area, so it makes sense to focus on areas or fisheries that are most likely to contribute most to any conservation threat, and this is true when deciding where to focus monitoring or where to propose management action.

Managing the risk:

Management actions to limit bycatch are rarely simple to agree on. PET species are usually taken in more than one fishery, so management advice needs to consider the effects of imposing changes on several fleets. Deciding on fishing restrictions means assessing the PET species bycatch rates in the fisheries concerned, the conservation impact, and also considering the economic or social consequences.

Restrictions in one fishery may lead to increased effort in others, so the multispecies consequences of changes in fishing effort amongst gears should also be considered to avoid conserving one species by increasing the risk to another, highlighting the importance of understanding the impacts of all gears, not just those that occasionally take a high-profile protected species.

Management actions may involve effort limitations, or area specific fishing restrictions, or technical measures, such as changes to mesh sizes, or even the introduction of specific bycatch mitigation technology. Elaborating the best way to achieve bycatch limitation targets may require expensive gear technology trials and an experimental approach to determining optimal solutions; perseverance is required.

Future uncertainty:

Developments in EU fisheries management pose challenges to addressing bycatch in an ecosystem based approach. On-board fishery monitoring, whether for bycatch or other purposes, may in the future all be subsumed into a single data collection framework, with a potential risk of a loss of focus on PET species.

In the meantime, integrating bycatch concerns with stock management advice is challenging, as most stock advice to managers is given in terms of Total Allowable Catches (TACs) and quotas, regardless of the gear types involved in taking those quotas. In contrast, bycatch assessment is usually framed within a perspective that is focused on differences in gear types regardless of the target fish, which can lead to two different streams of advice. Exactly how these two advice streams can be harmonized to produce a coherent management strategy remains to be elaborated.


​​​​​​​​By Simon Northridge of the School of Biology at the University of ​St Andrews, Scotland​ and member of ICES working groups on Bycatch of Protected Species (WGBYC) and Marine Mammal Ecology (WGMME)