Citizen science meets stock and operational management become as one.

Brief overview of Remote Electronic Monitoring, how it works and stakeholder perspectives. Remote monitoring should be seen as an investment rather than a cost.

It is difficult to manage anything if you don't measure/monitor it. REM provides a comprehensive and low cost approach to monitoring fisheries.  This video promotes a real-world solution where fishermen themselves - given that, collectively they are being best placed to provide data - can provide full catch accountability, real-time data and a "daily fish forecast".  As valid as data collected from fisheries research vessels is it cannot compare to the sum total of data received in real time by the entire fleet. Today's processing and comms technology (which even a smartphone is capable of handling) available today means we have moved on well beyond the point of relying on a handful of research vessels with limited time and spatial resources subject to ever-reducing funding support.

Most of the industry has already shown the integrity with which it embraced change to fishing habits and gear modification to show effective at management of stocks - as recent figures from ICES on NS and other NE Atlantic stocks indicates.

Thanks to @Mogens_Schou for the heads up on this.

Fishing Future from Costing the Earth

Listen in to BBC Radio 4's Tom Heath as he did the rounds of the UK to put together a range of views from fishermen north and south of the border

The British fishing industry suffered decades of sharp decline during our membership of the European Union. The European Common Fisheries Policy has long been regarded by many as a disaster, both for fishermen and for fish stocks. So will Brexit bring a bright new dawn? Will fishing boats from other nations be forced from our waters, could new 200 mile limits provide our fleet with copious fish to catch? Or will our Brexit negotiators focus on maintaining markets for big businesses like finance and the car industry, offering our fish stocks as sacrificial prawns?

Tom Heap visits fishing communities in Peterhead, Hastings and Brixham to gauge the mood and meets the conservationists hoping that new measures could revive our fish stocks.

Plenty of food for thought from some of the comments - crucially over the ability of UK ministers to negotiate quota shares on stocks already at MSY.  We will be waiting with baited breath!

Monday morning in Newlyn

It's a trawl fish day today...

with the quality end of the market putting up a good show with fish like these red mullet...

giant monk tails...

Dover sole...

and some cracking gurnards...

along with some luscious ling - favoured by Cornwall's Michelin magician, @ChefNathanOutlaw...

pollack take pride of place from the hand liner Sea Spray...

while the AA landed some cracking cod...

beautiful brill...

and a bag or two of scallops...

along with a handful of bass...

there's no prizes for guessing which part of London these crackers are headed...

there were more scollies form the big beam trawler, Sapphire III...

and some big, meaty tub gurnards...

while Tom tipped up with some handsome haddock...

the Twilight III dug out some Dovers...

all of which kept the buyers busy until the end of the sale...

many hands make light work...

cuttlefish mean extra work for some as their ink gets everywhere...
 

out in the harbour both sides of the Mary Williams pier are devoid of any netters,...

a sure sign that it must be a neap tide...

fly past...

the Mission wind vane indicates that the wind is in the west...

the skies overhead busy with trans-Atlantic travellers...

hard to imagine that instead of road there was a beach was just a few feet in front of the old coastguard boathouse...

Harriet must be getting impatient...

all the heavy pieces of gantry are now in place on the Trevessa IV...

signs of summer, two big yachts en-passant...

anti-fouled and new anodes...

heavens above!, tiz a bright start to the day...

as the Scilly medic boat pays a visit for fuel.

Serene Saturday

The netter, Britannia V and the beam trawler, Resurgam lay to the fish market...

while the tosher Girl Pauline takes gear aboard...

coat of arms on the stem, a sure sign of boats from north of the border...

like the Achieve...

and the Apollo...

further up the quay, the Trevessa IV gets the uppermost section of her towing gantry fitted by A&P Falmouth engineers....

steady as she goes...

ast this time of year many of the beam trawlers work 3m trawls for Dover sole..

while others continue to work their normal full-size beam trawls...

Jeremy making sure his new tug boat is looking ship-shape...

a busy weekend in store for Debbie and her team in the Star Inn.

ICES Journal - plenty of excellent articles about MSY, fishermen and scientists.

Plenty of highly relevant reading from the latest ICES Journal in light of our impending Brexit and exit from the CFP in some way, shape or form - especially the focus on stakeholders (fishermen et al) and scientists:

Below are the article titles and their abstracts with links to the full article.


To shape or to be shaped: engaging stakeholders in fishery management advice

The purpose of this article is to assess the effectiveness of the collaboration between stakeholders and scientists in the construction of a bio-economic model to simulate management strategies for the fisheries in Iberian Atlantic waters. For 3 years, different stakeholders were involved in a model development study, participating in meetings, surveys and workshops. Participatory modelling involved the definition of objectives and priorities of stakeholders, a qualitative evaluation and validation of the model for use by decision-makers, and an iterative process with the fishing sector to interpret results and introduce new scenarios for numerical simulation. The results showed that the objectives of the participating stakeholders differed. Incorporating objectives into the design of the model and prioritizing them was a challenging task. We showed that the parameterization of the model and the analysis of the scenarios results could be improved by the fishers’ input: e.g. ray and skate stocks were explicitly included in the model; and the behaviour of fleet dynamics proved much more complex than assumed in any traditional modelling approach. Overall, this study demonstrated that stakeholder engagement through dialogue and many interactions was beneficial for both, scientists and the fishing industry. The researchers obtained a final refined model and the fishing industry benefited from participating in a process, which enables them to influence decisions that may affect them directly (to shape) whereas non-participatory processes lead to management strategies being imposed on stakeholders (to be shaped).


Bridging the gap between fisheries science and society: exploring fisheries science as a social activity

Much has been written about the poor relations between fisheries scientists and lay people, but the experience of two field biologists suggests that good relations can exist and have a positive impact on the exchange of knowledge across the “science”—“society” divide. This article is a first attempt to map the contact points between fisheries scientists and lay people and to explore the spin-offs these can have. It presents the results of two surveys conducted with participants at the November 2015 MYFISH/ICES Symposium on “Targets and limits for long term fisheries management”: a real-time Kahoot survey of the audience and a longer, on-line survey some participants filled out following the symposium session. The survey results generally support the supposition that fisheries scientist-society interactions are extremely varied and that much in the way of information exchange and mutual learning can occur. However they also show that trust issues remain in the fisheries management community, but not just between scientists and lay people: fisheries managers and environmental non-governmental organizations may be less trusted by scientists than are lay people. The study concludes by discussing how future studies should be designed and focused and with an invitation for comments from the ICES community.


Towards a flexible Decision Support Tool for MSY-based Marine Protected Area design for skates and rays

It is recommended that demersal elasmobranchs be managed using spatial proxies for Maximum Sustainable Yield. Here we combine escapement biomass—the percentage of the stock which must be retained each year to conserve it—with maps of predicted Catch Per Unit Effort (CPUE) of four ray species [cuckoo (Leucoraja naevus), thornback (Raja clavata), blonde (Raja brachyura), and spotted (Raja montagui)], created using Boosted Regression Tree modelling. We then use a Decision Support Tool to generate location and size options for Marine Protected Areas to protect these stocks, based on the priorities of the various stakeholders, notably the minimisation of fishing effort displacement. Variations of conservation/fishing priorities are simulated, as well as differential priorities for individual species, with a focus on protecting nursery grounds and spawning areas. Prioritizing high CPUE cells results in a smaller closed area that displaces the most fishing effort, whereas prioritizing low fishing effort results in a larger closed area that displaces the least fishing effort. The final result is a complete software package that produces maps of predicted species CPUE from limited survey data, and allows disparate stakeholders and policymakers to discuss management options within a mapping interface.


Achieving maximum sustainable yield in mixed fisheries: a management approach for the North Sea demersal fisheries

Achieving single species maximum sustainable yield (MSY) in complex and dynamic fisheries targeting multiple species (mixed fisheries) is challenging because achieving the objective for one species may mean missing the objective for another. The North Sea mixed fisheries are a representative example of an issue that is generic across most demersal fisheries worldwide, with the diversity of species and fisheries inducing numerous biological and technical interactions. Building on a rich knowledge base for the understanding and quantification of these interactions, new approaches have emerged. Recent paths towards operationalizing MSY at the regional scale have suggested the expansion of the concept into a desirable area of “pretty good yield”, implemented through a range around FMSY that would allow for more flexibility in management targets. This article investigates the potential of FMSY ranges to combine long-term single-stock targets with flexible, short-term, mixed-fisheries management requirements applied to the main North Sea demersal stocks. It is shown that sustained fishing at the upper bound of the range may lead to unacceptable risks when technical interactions occur. An objective method is suggested that provides an optimal set of fishing mortality within the range, minimizing the risk of total allowable catch mismatches among stocks captured within mixed fisheries, and addressing explicitly the trade-offs between the most and least productive stocks.

Effects of changes in stock productivity and mixing on sustainable fishing and economic viability

Within the new FMSY European paradigm, this paper shows how a combination of changes in fish stock mixing, non-stationarity in productivity, and constraints on unit stock concepts undermine the effective management of fisheries, especially when management reference points are not adjusted accordingly. Recent changes in stock structures, conditions and stock mixing between eastern and western Baltic cod can jeopardize the reliability of stock assessments and of the fishery economy. We modelled how different management, individual vessel decision-making, and stock growth and mixing scenarios have induced alternative individual vessel spatial effort allocation and economic performance by affecting fishing costs and by changing the relative stock abundance and size distribution. Stock mixing heavily influences profit and stock abundance for stocks that have experienced increased fishing mortality (F) levels. Western cod F has increased from a higher total allowed catches (TAC) advised in the medium-term due to the westward migration of eastern cod while eastern cod F has increased from reduced growth in the east. Greater pressures on western cod and decreased eastern cod growth and conditions greatly reduce the overall cod spawning stock biomass, thus changing the landing size composition and associated fishery profits. As a cumulative effect, fishing efforts are redirected towards western areas depending on management (quotas). However, total profits are less affected when traditional fishing opportunities and switching possibilities for other species and areas are maintained. Our evaluation indicates that current management mechanisms cannot correct for potential detrimental effects on cod fisheries when effort re-allocation changes landing origins. By investigating different economic starting conditions we further show that Baltic cod mis-management could have resulted in unintended unequal (skewed) impacts and serious consequences for certain fleets and fishing communities compared with others. Our management strategy evaluation is instrumental in capturing non-linear effects of different recommendations on sustainability and economic viability, and we show that fixed F-values management is likely not an attainable or sufficient goal in ensuring the sustainability and viability of fisheries and stocks given changing biological conditions.

Fishing for MSY: using “pretty good yield” ranges without impairing recruitment

Pretty good yield (PGY) is a sustainable fish yield corresponding to obtaining no less than a specified large percentage of the maximum sustainable yield (MSY). We investigated 19 European fish stocks to test the hypothesis that the 95% PGY yield range is inherently precautionary with respect to impairing recruitment. An FMSY range was calculated for each stock as the range of fishing mortalities (F) that lead to an average catch of at least 95% of MSY in long-term simulations. Further, a precautionary reference point for each stock (FP.05) was defined as the F resulting in a 5% probability of the spawning-stock biomass falling below an agreed biomass limit below which recruitment is impaired (Blim) in long-term simulations. For the majority of the stocks analysed, the upper bound of the FMSY range exceeded the estimated FP.05. However, larger fish species had higher precautionary limits to fishing mortality, and species with larger asymptotic length were less likely to have FMSY ranges impairing recruitment. Our study shows that fishing at FMSY generally is precautionary with respect to impairing recruitment for highly exploited teleost species in northern European waters, whereas the upper part of the range providing 95% of MSY is not necessarily precautionary for small- and medium-sized teleosts.


Link to the full journal here:

March's final #FishyFriday

With just a broken trip from the beam trawler, Twilight landing on the market this morning fish was in short supply...

with more buyers than boxes...

so fish like this solitary red mullet went for top prices...

along with a few dabs...

a handful of huge monk tails...

a box or two of lemons...

and a handful of plaice...

a few punts managed to score with a scratching of mackerel...

with Sam ably demonstrating that members of the fairer sex are well capable of multi-tasking as she sorts fish and makes a call to base...

the cuttles went for big bucks hopefully just enough to give the boys some entrance tokens as my old mate Taffy used to call his wages...

auctioneer Ryan is obviously made up with the prices being bid for the blackstuff...

back out in the harbour a third Spaniard arrived overnight - well Spanish built maybe, but a British registered fishing vessel nonetheless...

from west of the Scillys...

she is the 35m Fleetwood registered stern trawler...

 Udra, again loaded with spare trawls and trawl netting...

and capable of working the very worst kind of weather the North East Atlantic can throw at her...

there are two main winches, one for the steel warp which enables her to trawl in deep water in places like the Great Sole Bank and the peaks and troughs of the Porcupine and one for the long combination bridles needed to keep the trawl tight to the bottom and gather in her main target fish of megrim sole and monk - fishing where historically no, or very few, British trawlers ever went...

the morning also brings another FD registered boat but of much smaller proportions, the crabber and whelker, AAnne Mary B...

another RNLI delivery, Workington's new Shannon class lifeboat en-passant...

the sunrise would suggest today's weather could do anything...

Mali Rose, the replacement for the Gry Maritha exercises her deck crane.