Seafood Cornwall Training - new courses for entry into the fishing industry.

Skippers & boat owners - Seafood Cornwall Training would love to hear how you can help continue to fill places on these courses - give them a call if you can help - on 01736 364324 or call my mobile 07964 373708, best wishes Clare Leverton, Training Manager.

Sardines and the slip, mid-week action in Newlyn.

Early doors and the fish quay is busy...

 the Shiralee is getting a makeover...

while the New Venture is about to sail for another day trip deep in the bay...

while Big John prepares enough bait for his pots today...

the summer Cornish sardine season has got off to a bumper start... 

with nearly 1000 tons already landed...

the fish are in tip-top condition...

and brailed ashore from the chilled seawater thanks they are held in...

each brail of fish...

is opened above an iced insulated tub...

and the fish dropped gently into slush-iced water...

before the guys...

head back aboard, with another day of mending to be done...

it's all smiles with young Jeremy...

as he heads for his potting grounds...

over on the slip...

the Billy Rowney...

is part way through her paint-up and refit...

there are some very ancient fittings around this part of the harbour...

though it is possible the the classic lugger Barnabas is even older - built in 1883...

than the South Pier which was built in 1885...

inshore boat Dreamcatcher heads for the gaps, hopefully she's off to catch something more than just dreams...

the Billy Rowney's  classic lines make a fine sight up on the slip.

Fisheries Bill Lords Amendments - Virtue Signalling vs Sustainable Fisheries Management.

Of the eight objectives included in the Fisheries Bill, five of them relate to fishing sustainably. And that’s fine. Without a functioning ecosystem and policies which limit fishing to safe levels, there will be no fishing industry. It makes sense too, from an economic perspective, for our management decisions to aim to achieve maximum yields, where that is a reasonable option. What fisherman would be against high sustainable yields? 

It is another thing, however, to give primacy to one aspect of environmental sustainability over all other objectives; and to prioritise environmental purity in the short as well as the long-term, whatever the cost. Yet, this is the force and intent of an amendment sponsored by the opposition parties in the House of Lords.

Accepting this amendment would carry serious consequences for practical fisheries management. In particular, it would tie ministers’ hands when setting quotas each year. The government would be required to set all quotas at levels which (theoretically) would deliver maximum sustainable yield, in all circumstances. No ifs, or buts. And irrespective of the costs.

The rest of this article explains what this would mean in the real world, but the core message is clear: accepting this amendment would provide a fundamental impediment to practical and effective fisheries management. We do not think that this is what the authors of the amendments intended.

Setting Quotas

Sound, pragmatic, yet principled, fisheries management decisions often require that a particular TAC (total allowable catch) to be set below MSY. This is not, as is sometimes suggested because ministers are cowed by the “powerful fishing lobby” but because it is necessary to secure the best overall fisheries outcomes.

Scientific advice on setting TACs according to MSY is presented annually on the basis of single stocks, not as they relate to one another in mixed fisheries settings. It is the responsibility of fisheries ministers (acting as fisheries managers) to balance out the tensions between different stocks in the advice. Responding to this, even the EU had to develop the concept of MSY Ranges to cope with the real world, where fish swim and are caught together, and stock abundance of individual species vary naturally in response to environmental signals. This kind of flexibility would be proscribed in the UK from 1st January, by prioritising short-term sustainability in all circumstances and under all conditions - if the amendment was accepted. Minaisters would find themselves repeatedly subject to judicial review if they used their judgement that the best outcomes required a trade-off between different objectives listed in the Bill.

Mixed Fisheries

In mixed fisheries, where a range of different species are caught together, the conservation status of the individual stocks often varies. One stock, for environmental or fisheries reasons, might need to be rebuilt, whilst the others are already fished sustainably – at or around maximum sustainable yield. In these circumstances, fisheries managers might consider that a three to five-year rebuilding plan, with supplementary measures to rebuild the weak stock, would be the best way to bring that stock back up to MSY, without causing undue socio-economic harm. This pragmatic, staged, approach would be ruled out if there was a legally enforceable environmental priority.

If we still have a landing obligation along current lines, the situation would be worse. Ministers would be faced with the unpalatable choice of tying up whole fleets, when the quota for that species was exhausted - or breaking the law.

This is not an abstract theoretical argument. We currently have a real-life example in the Celtic Sea where cod, which represents less that 0.1% of the catch, threatens to close down the demersal fisheries in the South West of England, denying the fishing industry access to their main economic quotas for hake and monkfish worth respectively £7million and £19 million in landings and hundreds of jobs in fishing. The scientists confirm that hake and monkfish are harvested sustainably. Nevertheless, the fisheries for these species are jeopardised by the very low TAC set for cod to meet MSY.

Rebuilding the cod stocks in the North Sea, whilst continuing to fish for the abundant haddock and whiting stocks, presents the same challenge. Cod in all of our waters is facing a distributional shift, probably caused by warmer sea temperatures. Cod, already at its southernmost extent in our waters, is moving northwards by 12km per year. This presents a management challenge.

Similarly, whiting in the Irish Sea, which could potentially close down the nephrops (prawn) fishery worth £25 million and on which whole communities depend.

These examples illustrate that sustainable management of mixed fisheries requires necessary trade-offs between the short and long term, between different species caught together, and between the biological and the socio-economic. These necessary compromises would be impeded by giving primacy to environmental over all other criteria. It would remove our ability to apply a careful balanced approach to harvesting which takes care of both fish, and fishers, along with their communities.

Three-Legged Stool

The sustainable use of natural resources is generally understood to require three pillars: environmental, economic and social. Like a three-legged stool, if one of the pillars is missing the policy will fall over. There is abundant experience from the last 40 years which illustrates the truth of this insight. Blunt and unimaginative fisheries management measures have time after time, foundered, or generated unintended consequences. People require livelihoods and economic security as well as long term sustainability. Measures which ignore this will condemn themselves to failure one way or another. The original Fisheries Bill suggested that this important lesson had been learnt. It would be desperate if that lesson was now unlearnt.

Unintended Consequences

We have learnt that top-down, blunt, management measures in fisheries tend to generate unintended consequences, which are often of the unwelcome variety. Displacing fishing activities into adjacent areas, or other fisheries, is one of the most common knock-on effects. Increasing the level of discards and driving discards underground is another. One way of reading the history of the Common Fisheries Policy (and quite a bit of domestic UK fisheries policy) is about constant efforts to mitigate perverse side effects of well-intended legislation.

International Negotiations

In the future, we can expect that bilateral (or trilateral) international negotiations will be the main vehicle for managing shared stocks. However tough these negotiations become, they must be rooted in mutual respect for the rights and sovereignty of all of those involved. It would not be acceptable for one party to enact domestic legislation and then expect international partners to bow to it, whether they agreed with the thrust of the measures or not. That is not how international negotiations work, yet that is what the EU has brought to the table in recent years with its unilateral but mandatory requirement to set TACS at MSY by 2020. During EU/Norway negotiations, independent coastal states like Norway, with much stronger credentials on conservation of fish stocks than the CFP, have made plain their scorn for a crude attempt to shoehorn unrealistic, poorly drafted, EU domestic legislation into international negotiations. If every country insists that its domestic legislation takes priority, international fisheries negotiations would be stuck in a perpetual impasse.

If the UK wishes to avoid putting itself in the same position, this amendment must be allowed to fall.

More Rigid than the CFP

In fact, prioritising the sustainability objective would, if accepted, mean that UK law was more inflexible and less balanced than the CFP. The first objective of the CFP reads:

“The CFP shall ensure that fishing and aquaculture activities are environmentally sustainable in the long-term and are managed in a way that is consistent with the objectives of achieving economic, social and employment benefits, and of contributing to the availability of food supplies.” Article 2.1 of the Common Fisheries Policy Regulation EU 1384/13

At least the authors of the CFP recognised that there are three pillars, not one, to sustainability and these must be balanced carefully.

In-built Accountability

With a balanced portfolio of objectives, the government would remain accountable for its obligation to meet sustainability objectives. The five interrelated sustainability objectives would be given force through the Joint Fisheries Statement and Fisheries Management Plans. These instruments will provide for a more refined interpretation of the management objectives for particular circumstances and include inbuilt prioritisation of particular elements of sustainability, including:

⦁ Provisions to specify policies for restoring or maintaining a stock at sustainable levels (section6(3)(a))

⦁ Improve evidence to assess a stock’s maximum sustainable yield (section 6(3)(b)(ii)).

⦁ The requirement to follow the precautionary approach (in line with the objective) where evidence is not sufficient to assess a stock’s maximum sustainable yield (section 6(4)).

Reporting requirements will ensure that government decisions are scrutinised and that the various objectives relating sustainability are upheld over the long term (section 11).

Commons

The Bill returns to the House of Commons on the 1st September and it is at that stage that these amendments will be considered. The House will have to decide whether it prioritises virtue signalling over truly effective sustainable fisheries management.

Notes

Fisheries Bill objectives

The fisheries objectives are—

1. (a) the sustainability objective,

2. (b) the precautionary objective,

3. (c) the ecosystem objective,

4. (d) the scientific evidence objective,

5. (e) the bycatch objective,

6. (f) the equal access objective,

7. (g) the national benefit objective,

8. (h) the climate change objective.

Amendments introduced in the House of Lords

The “sustainability objective” is that—

1. (a) fish and aquaculture activities do not compromise environmental

sustainability in either the short or the long term;

2. (b) subject to subsection (2)(a), fishing fleets must— 15

(i) be managed to achieve economic, social and employment benefits and contribute to the availability of food supplies, and (ii) have fishing capacity that is economically viable but does not overexploit marine stocks.

The sustainability objective is the prime fisheries objective. 20

The “precautionary objective” is that—

(a) the precautionary approach to fisheries management is applied, and

(b) exploitation of marine stocks restores and maintains populations of harvested species above biomass levels capable of producing maximum sustainable yield.

Full story courtesy of the NNFo website 24TH JULY 2020 IN BREXIT, EUROPE / COMMON FISHERIES POLICY

In related story that appeared in the Northern Scot newspaper it is apprent that feelings are running high with some north of the border:

Fishing in Moray: Scotland being 'frozen out' of maritime discussions

The Scottish Government claims it is being "frozen out" over talks about the future of the fishing industry and maritime security.

Humza Yousaf, the Justice Secretary, is complaining that the devolved governments have been omitted from the UK Government’s Ministerial EU Exit Operations Committee, where maritime issues are being discussed.

Justice secretary Humza has called for an urgent four nation ministerial meeting on the issue. He said: "While we remain opposed to leaving the EU and believe it is extremely reckless to rule out an extension to the Transition Period, as a responsible government we want to be as fully prepared for Brexit as possible, including working with the other UK Governments."

Scotland’s waters cover 62% of the UK’s domestic exclusive economic zone. Marine and fisheries compliance is a fully devolved issue. As such, Marine Scotland Compliance regularly inspects and patrols Scottish waters to ensure fisheries are sustainable and to provide protection for the marine environment.

Mr Yousaf said: "The Scottish Government has responsibility for many aspects of maritime security, in particular marine and fisheries protection.  "Given Scotland represents a large area of UK waters, we have extensive expertise to share.

"We have had a good working relation with the UK Government, but it is deeply concerning that devolved governments have now been frozen out of UK Ministers’ maritime Brexit discussions."

The Department for Transport co-ordinates the UK Government’s work on maritime security. Mr Yousaf says he has written to the UK’s Transport Secretary Grant Shapps calling for an urgent four nation ministerial meeting.

He said: "This is more than just another example of UK Ministers seeking to undermine devolution and respect for devolved competencies.  "It compromises our ability to protect Scottish interests and seriously hampers the UK’s Brexit preparations on this critical matter."

By Alistair Whitfield- alistair.whitfield@hnmedia.co.uk

Meanwhile, the Yorkshire Post also carried a story by Emma Hardy (MP for Hull West & Hessle)

Stop treating fishing like a second-class industry 

THOSE of us who are privileged to live on the Humber understand better than most the importance of fishing – not only to our region, but to our country.  Unfortunately, for all their bluster on making fishing a priority after Brexit, the Tories have proved once again that they just don’t get it. 

In setting up a new Trade and Agriculture Commission, a body that will bring together farmers, retailers and consumers to advise government on future trade policy, Defra and DIT (Department for International Trade) seem to be on the right lines. The creation of the Commission seems to recognise the need for close collaboration in policymaking on food production and trade – something any farmer would tell you was common sense – so why have our fishermen been left out?

The new Commission will be an important means of securing opportunities at home and abroad for UK farmers, maintaining environmental and animal welfare standards and looking after the interests of consumers. It is true that fishing represents only a small part of our total economy, but the Government should not undervalue the thousands of jobs fishing creates not just on boats large and small, but in processing, logistics and food service. They are also at risk of ignoring the cultural and historical importance of fishing as part of our maritime heritage and our communities.

The creation of this Commission is to be welcomed and the NFU and its supporters congratulated for their successful campaign.

However, there is concern that the Commission may lack the teeth to affect the Government’s trade policy and that its recommendations will come too late to impact upon the contents of the trade agreements currently being negotiated with the US and others. Labour supported amendments to the Agriculture and Trade Bills to prevent food being imported if produced to lower standards than those that must be met by our own British farmers – an issue highlighted by The Yorkshire Post’s own Editorial last week. But these amendments were voted down by the Government, despite its manifesto pledge not to compromise on standards in future trade deals.

Boris Johnson’s government often seems to be guided more by dogma than it is by common sense, but even by those standards this is a negligent failure to look after the interests of those thousands of fishermen dependent on international trade. While trade and agriculture interests are brought together in the same Commission, the Government seems content that fisheries and trade policies do not mix.

For decades in Britain we have imported most of the fish that we like to eat (largely cod, haddock and salmon) from waters controlled by Norway, Greenland, Iceland and the Faroes, while we have exported most of the fish we catch in our waters, mainly to the EU27. This is all down to national tastes and historical fishing patterns, and it means that for most people in the industry, as well as for retailers and consumers, the number one priority is a healthy cross-border trading environment. Fishing and trade are not only mutually dependent, they are virtually one and the same thing. Like many industries, British fishing has suffered heavily during the pandemic. One of the reasons for this was the virtual collapse of the markets in the EU where we sell our high- quality shellfish and other specialist catches.

While prices for some seafood collapsed by up to 80 per cent, UK consumers did not switch to langoustines and chips, but stuck to their imported favourites. UK fishermen still need an open and frictionless global market to trade in, 
and open waters to fish in, while processors will need a good supply of fish from UK waters and beyond, as well as an open export market to sell their products into. British retailers and consumers will need a plentiful supply of fresh fish from waters such as those between Greenland and Norway where the fish for our national dish are most abundant. For the sake of the fishermen of Hull, Bridlington and Whitby, and for coastal communities all around the country, the Government must lay ideology aside and recognise that fishing and trade go together in exactly the same way as agriculture and trade.

Fishing is not a second-class industry, and our fishermen deserve a Fisheries and Trade Commission to protect their interests now.

Emma Hardy is Labour MP for Hull
 West and Hessle.

COVID-19 and mandated on-board fisheries observers during the pandemic resurgence.

Our friend Nils Stop across the big pond has written a piece on how the Covid 19 pandemic in the USA is playing wot with the annual stock assessments on the Northeast coast:

On the heels of delaying its Northeast fisheries observer program this summer, the National Marine Fisheries Service cancelled three planned research surveys for the remainder of 2020 on the research vessel Henry B. Bigelow as the COVID-19 pandemic continues.

Anyone who is familiar with the NOAA/NMFS stock assessments realises that the annual surveys conducted by the R/V Henry B. Bigelow in the Northeast and her sister ships in other regions (the R/V Bell M. Shimada, R/V Oscar Dyson, R/V Pisces, and R/V Reuben Lasker, (https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/node/231) are the backbone of the federal fisheries management process. This fleet of state-of-the-art fisheries survey vessels, which represent an investment of almost half a billion taxpayers’ dollars, is of an importance to the federal fisheries that it would be extremely difficult to overstate.

The NOAA/NMFS “Navy’s” at-sea surveys in the Northeast region were cancelled at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and will not be resumed for at least the remainder of this year. “Since March, we have been rigorously analysing various options for conducting cruises this year and are taking a survey-by-survey, risk-based approach. After much deliberation, we determined that there was no way to move forward with these surveys while effectively minimising risk and meeting core survey objectives,” according to officials at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center in a statement issued July 10. (https://tinyurl.com/y2e9y9wd).

The Bigelow is 208 feet long, cost $54 million to build, has a crew of 24 and a compliment of 17 scientists (https://tinyurl.com/yxgoks6z ). There isn’t a commercial fishing vessel on the East Coast that approaches the Bigelow in size, in displacement, or in the amount (or comfort) of the accommodations for crew and scientists. Having her sitting at the dock in Newport, Rhode Island is going to have an incalculable negative impact on the fisheries management process and could cost the commercial fishing industry from North Carolina to Maine tens of millions of dollars when the scientists/statisticians at NOAA/NMFS are finished applying the precautionary principal to near-term future landings.

But mandatory on-board observers (https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/topic/fishery-observers) pose no COVID 19 threat to commercial captains or crew?

After a successful push by the commercial fishing industry (An East Coast Perspective on Coronavirus Impacts at https://tinyurl.com/yy2rggf3), because of COVID-19 concerns, NOAA/NMFS put off plans for resuming the mandatory on-board observers program for one month. It is now scheduled to restart on August 1 (see Temporary Waivers on Northeast Observers, Monitors Through July 31, Resuming Coverage August 1 at https://tinyurl.com/yanxmkrq.) According to the announcement, “during the month of July, we (NOAA/NMFS) will continue to work with regional observer and at-sea monitoring service providers to finalize their observer redeployment plans, conduct outreach with industry, and finalize our internal programs and policies that will support the safe and effective redeployment of observers and at-sea monitors in the region.... as has been done throughout the rest of the country, it is the intent of NOAA Fisheries to begin redeploying observers as soon as it is safe and appropriate to do so. While we intend to begin redeploying observers on August 1, we recognize that this public health crisis continues to evolve and changing conditions may warrant re-evaluating these plans.”

The assumption at NOAA/NMFS now is that it will be “safe and appropriate” for the crews, the observers, the crews’ families, the dock and handling/processing personal, and a whole bunch of other people to start redeploying observers on commercial fishing vessels as of August 1.

According to Chris Oliver (NOAA Fisheries Assistant Administrator) on July 16, 2020, “Observers and monitors, at-sea and shoreside, are an essential component of commercial fishing operations and provide critical information that is necessary to keep fisheries open and to provide sustainable seafood to our nation during this time.” This was in the build-up to his announcement that observer coverage was to resume – with minor procedural modifications – on August 1 (https://tinyurl.com/y484oumk). Apparently Mr. Oliver’s fleet of mega-yacht expensive, state-of-the art research vessels aren’t essential to commercial fishing operations nor do they provide critical information to keep fishermen fishing. But having a stranger armed with a measuring board, a scalpel, some jars and a clip board on board a small commercial fishing vessel, is and will.

Who sets the “importance to the management process” priorities at NOAA/NMFS?

“AIS Inc., a scientific services company headquartered in Marion, Mass., has been awarded a five-year, $50 million contract to provide fisheries observers for federal monitoring programs in the Northeast” (Press Release. Northeast Fisheries Science Centre, June 11, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y6kygnyd).

It sure isn’t the fishermen, their families, their neighbours, their colleagues or anyone else in commercial fishing communities.

I’d bet dollars to donuts that anyone with any experience in the fishery management process, at least anyone who didn’t work for NOAA/NMFS or one of the contractors that supply the observers, would be hard pressed to argue that observers on commercial fishing vessels are more essential or provide more critical information to that process than the trawl surveys that the government vessels and the scientists on them perform.

So continuing the surveys on these commodious NOAA/NMFS research vessels under the present – and obviously worsening – pandemic-spawned conditions can’t be done “while effectively minimising risk.” Hence the survey cruises of the R/V Bigelow cancellations detailed above and others.

But the mandatory on-board observers are scheduled to be back aboard commercial fishing vessels come August.

What’s new in COVID-19 research?

Among the most recent publications on COVID-19 transmission was The implications of silent transmission for the control of COVID-19 outbreaks, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (07/06/2020) by a group of researchers from York University, the Yale School of Public Health, the University of Maryland School of Medicine and the University of Florida. The abstract is below (with my emphasis added) and the full article is available at https://tinyurl.com/y8krtmh5.

Since the emergence of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), unprecedented movement restrictions and social distancing measures have been implemented worldwide. The socioeconomic repercussions have fuelled calls to lift these measures. In the absence of population-wide restrictions, isolation of infected individuals is key to curtailing transmission. However, the effectiveness of symptom-based isolation in preventing a resurgence depends on the extent of presymptomatic and asymptomatic transmission. We evaluate the contribution of presymptomatic and asymptomatic transmission based on recent individual-level data regarding infectiousness prior to symptom onset and the asymptomatic proportion among all infections. We found that the majority of incidences may be attributable to silent transmission from a combination of the presymptomatic stage and asymptomatic infections. Consequently, even if all symptomatic cases are isolated, a vast outbreak may nonetheless unfold. We further quantified the effect of isolating silent infections in addition to symptomatic cases, finding that over one-third of silent infections must be isolated to suppress a future outbreak below 1% of the population. Our results indicate that symptom-based isolation must be supplemented by rapid contact tracing and testing that identifies asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic cases, in order to safely lift current restrictions and minimise the risk of resurgence.

As reported by ABC News on July 8 in Asymptomatic and presymptomatic people transmit most COVID-19 infections: Study (https://tinyurl.com/y78t42xe):

“Silent transmission of the novel coronavirus could account for more than half of infections, according to one new mathematical model by U.S. and Canadian researchers.

The researchers utilised data on asymptomatic and presymptomatic transmission from two different epidemiological studies and estimated that more than 50% of infections were attributable to people not exhibiting symptoms.”

What this means is that if someone who is boarding a fishing vessel, for example a government mandated observer, has had any contact with ANYBODY who is infected during or after the observer’s two weeks of mandatory pre-trip isolation, there is a chance that they can infect the members of the crew with COVID-19. And there is no way of knowing if someone is a COVID-19 carrier short of an effective (whatever that means, but that’s a whole ‘nother can of worms) antibody test administered before coming aboard. According to this recent research, this is regardless of whether those observers are exhibiting any COVID 19 symptoms or not.

Most fishing communities are quintessentially “tight knit.” Virtually everyone is, if not directly related to, at least well acquainted with everyone else. And vessel captains attempt to hire crew members who they are familiar with or who come well recommended by colleagues, friends or family in the community.

Unfortunately the social distancing that the rest of us can readily employ to protect ourselves and others from COVID-19 infection is impossible on just about every commercial fishing vessel. This makes these personal relationships even more important than they usually are. In spite of NMFS Assistant Administrator Chris Oliver’s assurance that “in general, observers create no more risk than a crew member,” I want to put my safety (and the safety of my loved ones) in the hands of someone who I – or those whose judgment I trust – have no reservations about.

Sorry Mr. Oliver, but a recent college graduate working on his or her first post-graduation job for a federal contractor doesn’t fill that bill. Nor do the contracting businesses that he or she is employed by. They might be somewhat interested in the well-being of the observers they employ, they are probably seriously interested in their corporate well-being, but how interested could they be in the well-being of the members of fishing communities they are coming in the closest regular contact with on an around-the-clock basis.

Particularly in view of this recent COVID 19 transmission research it appears that, short of effective and readily available testing to indicate exposure, this means having observers tested on coming aboard the host vessel and then being isolated until (if?) they are cleared of COVID 19 infection. But the risks of depending on the commonly accepted indicators of infection and on any form of less than total observer isolation for a period of two weeks (or apparently 10 days as per the most recent federal guidelines) are far too dangerous to fishing communities than any potential gain to the fisheries managers of a few more data points.

Let the NOAA/NMFS research fleet and the NOAA/NMFS researchers do the job that they were designed or hired for, and spare the fishermen - and everyone they deal with when they are in port - the added worry of what exposure to infected observers via “silent transmission” of the COVID 19 virus could mean to them. 

A printable version is available from Nils at http://www.fishnet-usa.com/COVID19pt2.pdf.

Fathom podcast steams on with support from Seafarers UK

The podcast that has kept us in the loop during these uncertain times, by bringing together voices from across the fishing industry, has received continued funding support from Seafarers UK.

Led by the Cornish Fish Producers’ Organisation, Fathom launched in 2019 and is the UK’s only commercial fishing podcast, it features interviews with fishers, producer organisations, regulators and more, helping listeners get below the surface of the UK fishing industry.

Throughout Brexit, followed swiftly by the unsettling COVID-19 pandemic, Fathom has adapted with rapid response episodes to answer important, emerging questions concerning the fishing industry. These episodes have featured interviews with Victoria Prentis MP, Fisheries Minister, Barrie Deas, Chief Executive of the National Federation of Fishermen’s Organisation and Tom McCormack, Chief Executive Officer of the Marine Management Organisation.

Deborah Layde, Grants Director at Seafarers UK says, “For Seafarers UK, Fathom has shown breadth, depth and sector-wide intelligence in its choice of topics and guests. Episodes have been strongly grounded to meet fishers’ need for information in an easily digestible format, and topics are tuned in to the needs of the moment - covering wellbeing, safety, welfare and legislative updates. We believe Fathom has become a mechanism to support the industry and has a future rooted in fishers’ needs.”

Recently, Fathom has also hosted Seafish Chief Exec, Marcus Coleman, and Kara Brydson, Executive Director of Fisheries Innovation Scotland. These marketing and innovation conversations have helped fishermen to collectively navigate uncertain waters. However, it’s not just industry experts that Fathom invites on as guests, the podcast regularly hears directly from fishers too.

“Great podcast that allows fishermen’s voices to be heard. Covers relevant and interesting topics to members of the fishing industry in the UK.” A review from a Fathom listener.

Additional funding will ensure Fathom’s hub of industry insight, knowledge sharing and on-the-ground experience can continue into the future. Fathom host and Chief Executive of the Cornish PO, Paul Trebilcock, outlines what we can expect from the next six months of Fathom: “There are many more pressing topics to explore on the horizon - from going behind the scenes of the all-important Fisheries Bill to youth engagement, women in fishing and revisiting the topic of our very first episode back in October 2019 ‘The Future of Our Inshore Fisheries’. A big thanks to Seafarers UK for helping us continue to produce content. Please keep listening!”

To announce the additional funding support from Seafarers UK, Fathom is running a short competition – starting from today (23rd July 2020). Share a video on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram with #ListeningToFathom of you listening to the podcast wherever you most enjoy - your boat, net shed, quayside, van, gym, for example! - for the chance to win one of three waterproof speakers. The competition ends on 7th August where winners will be picked at random.

EU fishermen demand status quo access to UK waters after Brexit transition as trade talks resume

UK-EU trade talks resume today in London with a dinner between chief negotiators Michel Barnier and David Frost.  European fishermen told Michel Barnier to insist on EU boats fishing the same amount of fish in UK waters as before Brexit, ahead of trade negotiations in London this week.

The EU’s chief negotiator meets with David Frost, his UK counterpart, for dinner tonight before a full day’s talks on fishing rights after the end of the transition period on Tuesday.  Britain wants annual negotiations over fishing opportunities and a Norway-style agreement with Brussels, which is supported by British fishermen, who voted in large numbers for Brexit. A senior source close to the talks said that UK fishermen’s share would increase after the end of transition on January 1.

“Loss of access to fishing grounds, to markets for fish or the return of overfishing will ultimately harm all of us. Michel Barnier knows this,” said Gerard van Balsfoort, Chairman of the European Fisheries Alliance.

“Upsetting this balance will have serious consequences for all fishermen, European but also British,” he said, “that is why maintaining mutual access to fishing grounds and the current shares of fishing rights is in everybody’s interest.”

European fishermen are dependent on UK waters but Britain sells most of the fish it catches in Europe.

The EU’s opening negotiating position was that fishing rights and shares should be agreed under existing conditions, as if the UK had not left the EU’s Common Fisheries Policy, in return for the trade deal.

The UK wants a deal with annual negotiations and opportunities based on zonal attachment, a method to calculate where fish are. The Common Fisheries Policy is based on historic catch patterns agreed decades ago, which does not reflect that many fish have moved into UK waters because of climate change.

“The current system may be imperfect but it is the result of a difficult compromise between all involved countries, fishermen and the need for sustainable fish stocks,” Mr van Balsfoort told The Telegraph. “As almost all catches in the north East Atlantic are taken under sustainable conditions the fisheries management is working well,” he said. British negotiators insist the new agreement will be better for the environment.

Despite its small share of the EU and UK economies, fishing, along with the level playing field guarantees and the future role of the European Court of Justice, is a major obstacles to agreeing the free trade agreement before the October deadline set by the EU to allow time for it to be ratified.

Sources are confident the deal can be done if this week’s negotiations bring compromise from either side, which could unlock further concessions.

Failure to reach a deal on the zero tariff, zero quota agreement by the end of transition will mean the UK and EU trading on less lucrative WTO terms, which would involve tariffs. Mr Barnier has signalled a willingness to compromise on fishing, describing the EU’s position as “maximalist”. He insists that talks cannot be annual because there are more than 100 fishing species that would need to be negotiated over.

George Eustice, the environment secretary, recently suggested that a compromise could be found by agreeing multi-annual deals on certain fish but not others.

Mr Barnier has conceded that zonal attachment could be used to calculate fishing opportunities but wants it to be combined with other factors such as the historic fishing rights and the economic impact on coastal communities. EU sources said they were baffled by the lack of willingness to compromise shown by the UK team so far and described the past weeks of talks as going over old ground.

"Barnier is negotiating in good faith but he has to deal with an EU27 who still think unachievable outcomes on fish and level playing field are possible," a Number 10 source said over the weekend. Sources suggested that after months of deadlock both sides are keen to demonstrate progress in this week’s round of negotiations.

The UK and EU could announce a breakthrough on police and judicial cooperation where agreement is understood to be close at the close of the round, which will be followed by further negotiations in Brussels.

Full story courtesy of the Daily Telegraph.

After 36 years, Newlyn fish auction is to go online.

Back in 1994, a number of skipper owners, fish merchants and other harbour representatives met to hear from Europe's largest fresh produce auction company of the benefits to fish selling that a remote computerised auction could bring to Newlyn - England's largest fishing port which, at the time, exported around 90% of the fish landed into EU markets like France and Spain. A remote auction would also have been the first of its kind for a fish market in the UK.

A full thirty six years later it seems that such an auction is to be installed in Newlyn later this year for W. Stevenson & Son (Newlyn fish auction).

Every auction or cluster determines for itself how many fields are needed to describe its product (size, class etc.) and composes its own catalogues

Following the current market situation and the need for (further) digitisation of their fish auctions, Shetland Seafood Auctions (Lerwick) and W. Stevenson & Sons (Newlyn) are next to fully engage in the digital trading platform in the cloud, KOSMOS.

Shetland Seafood Auctions opts for 100% online auctioning. For the migration to the new KOSMOS platform, they have chosen to provide an extra clock, thanks to which they are able to sell the fish via 2 clocks to a total of 50 registered users.

Martin Leyland, CEO: “We have chosen the KOSMOS trading platform because it will allow buyers to purchase fish from Shetland on any device. Remote buyers can only access our current system on a Windows PC or laptop. The KOSMOS system also offers buyers access to more information on screen and has the potential to speed up the sale. This will enable us to sell and distribute a higher volume of fish landings.

The installation of KOSMOS in August 2020 coincides with the opening of two new fish market premises which will hold double the capacity of the previous fish markets in Lerwick.”

Shout auction Stevenson & Sons has ordered KOSMOS for two clocks for a total of 100 users, under the impetus of its shareholder Ocean Fish. We will link KOSMOS to the current auction infrastructure, enabling the auction to keep using its system. 

KOSMOS will communicate with the current data input terminals, the Marel grader and the back-office package A-Fish. For each transaction, a transaction ticket for the organisation of the internal logistics will be printed. The installation is scheduled to start in October 2020. 

Both fish auctions confirm the trend that online auctioning has become part of today’s society. The revenues derived in this manner will become an increasingly important part of the revenues of any selling organisation. This process is only accelerated by the coronavirus.