Do you think Flagged fishing vessels should land 70% of their fish in the UK? Give the MMO your views online.

At present, UK flagged fishing vessels land and then overland almost all their fish back to their 'home' country. By and large, any landings they do make are token gestures just to meet the minimum requirements they are at present subject. These contribute a net loss to the UK economy amounting to hundreds of millions of pounds of fish annually. 

CONSULTATION ON STRENGTHENING THE FISHERIES ECONOMIC LINK CONDITION IN ENGLAND.

As outlined in the 2018 Fisheries White Paper ‘Sustainable Fisheries for Future Generations’, leaving the EU gives the government the opportunity to reconsider the economic link licence condition. The condition applies to all UK registered vessels of 10 metres and over in length that fish against UK quota. It requires these vessels to demonstrate a link, or benefit, to the UK’s economy.

On 13 October 2020, the government launched a public consultation to seek views on a proposal to strengthen the economic link licence condition. We want to ensure that the owners of English registered vessels owners who fish against UK quota provide greater benefits to the UK, and to coastal communities in particular.

The proposal involves increasing the landing requirement to 70% for quota species and strengthening the quota donation requirement to increase the value of quota transferred to the Marine Management Organisation (MMO). The proposal also allows vessel owners to use a combination of the two criteria, landings and quota donation, to meet the economic link requirement, recognising the importance of flexibility to support ongoing business practices. Under the proposal the crewing and financial expenditure criteria would be removed as these are considered to generate the lowest economic benefits. The purpose of this proposal is to increase the benefit to the UK from fish caught against England’s allocation of quota. This recognises that fish are a shared national resource, which should be for the benefit of all.

The economic link is a devolved matter, and the policy proposal in this consultation only applies to England.

Subject to the outcome of the consultation, we intend to amend the economic link condition inc

We welcome your views on this policy proposal to strengthen the economic link conditions. We want to learn from your experience and to take your ideas on board. We need your help to get this right.

The consultation can be found on Defra’s website: 

https://consult.defra.gov.uk/fleetmanagement-team/fisheries-economic-linklicencecondition-in-engla/

We welcome your views and comments on the proposals. If you wish to obtain a copy of this consultation, please contact fisheriesengagement@defra.gov.uk

Protest Against The Helen Mary In The North Sea

 

Protest Against The Helen Mary In The North Sea Greenpeace UK activists take action to prevent the Helen Mary, a 117m long super trawler from fishing within the Central Fladen Marine Protected Area (MPA), east of Scotland. 

This comes after the UK Government's repeated failure to ban destructive industrial fishing from the country's MPA network. Greenpeace is calling for all offshore protected areas, including Central Fladen, to be put off limits to industrial fishing by 2030.

Brexit: where is the "fishing war" playing out?

Story courtesy of the FranceCulture website:

 Listen to Brexit again: where is the “fishing war” playing out?  

(If your French is good enough - listen 4 MIN)

Belgian beam trawler Marbi in Newlyn - her catch over-landed back to Belgium by lorry.

More than 50% of the catches of Belgian fishermen are made in British waters. Unloading of peaches in the port of Ostend on October 12. More than 50% of the catches of Belgian fishermen are made in British waters. 

Typically for a Belgian beam trawler, the Marbi fishes much of her time inside UK waters (VesselTracker AIS snapshot May1st-Jun1st 2020)

While an agreement on fishing with the United Kingdom has already been postponed twice, in recent days it has been France which has pinched the strongest: " Fisheries policy" , the Pdt of the Haut region predicted on Monday. of France Xavier Bertrand in the event of a “No Deal”; reflection of the French positions taken in recent days: from Minister Annick Girardin declaring that "Brexit, in France, will be the face of fishing" to Emmanuel Macron promising at the European Summit two weeks ago that fishermen will not be not the “Brexit sacrifices”.

Even if they say they are ready for a "no-deal", Europeans and French are worried about the damage to fleets - because 30% of French fishing is done in British waters - and to the coastal economy: in Boulogne sur Sea in particular, 65-70% of processed fish has passed through the UK.

As for the restrictions on freight, they would also affect businesses that could no longer supply themselves with fresh fish "J 1", warns the mayor of Boulogne and former MinPêche Frédéric Cuvillier: advice to foodies.

The European fishing front cracked?

Paris fears that fishing is the “adjustment variable” (known as Le Point ) of a concession at the last minute from the Commission; because since the summit on October 15, the British have made proposals on other issues and the European fisheries front is cracking:

After the unprecedented agreement with Norway (even though not a member of the EU), Belgium, which achieves 70-80% of its catches in British waters, would also like to obtain its exemption by reactivating a 17th century privilege, original act . More classic, some countries like the Netherlands, which are already big buyers of British fishing quotas, could do without an agreement by investing even more in British fleets.

However, without an agreement with London, Paris still remains in the EU and the 6 remaining fishing countries could well - by virtue of the European agreements - fall back voraciously on its waters full of fish.

Only 0.1% of the respective GDP: a major sticking point in the negotiations?

Fishing represents only 0.1% to 0.5% of GDP, it is true; but what counts economically in these negotiations is the North-East Atlantic where 2/3 of the French fishermen work and almost all the British.

In addition, the British fishermen who denounced the "injustice" of their situation did not do so without reasons, because the United Kingdom, which has some of the most fish-rich waters in the world (>40 species), attracts the whole of Europe and all the figures seem to show a real inequality: EU fishing is more than eight times more important in British waters than the other way around, British vessels only have 1.5% of the fishing quotas in their waters, 53% are held by the 3 largest European companies.

In recent months a fairly strong campaign has taken place in the press against the factory ships (including the huge Lithuanian-flagged Margiris ) that come into their waters, and held responsible for overfishing.

Could London negotiate its own quotas with each?

The fishermen are a problem but what must be understood is the almost indissoluble entanglement of the fishing industries, factories included, and there, the observed "inequality" is reversed: because more than 40% of European catches in UK waters are processed in the UK and ¾ of UK fishing industry exports go to the EU. In other words, what the British allow Europeans to fish, they transform and resell to them, such is the deal that binds them to Europe; and such is the one that they could perpetuate, even extend in the event of no agreement.

In other words, it is the British fishermen, whose numbers have been halved since 1983, who are already being sacrificed by the British fishing industry!

Could Brexit weigh on the European common fisheries policy?

The new fishing quotas for 2021 will be decided in December and the ten-year review of the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) is due to take place in 2023.

However, without an agreement with the United Kingdom, the increased competition in a lesser fishing area could shatter the CFP, warns the president of the National Fisheries Committee interviewed in La Croix : additional pressure ... Pince-mi et pincer -me are in a boat: pinch-mi and pinch-me fall into the water. Who is left? The CFP to reform?

It's only taken 26 years!

Newlyn has had a regular fish auction for over 500 years, ever since fish were caught in and around Mounts Bay...

originally, fish were laid out on the foreshore rowed in from the boats at anchor, a scene captured by Newlyn School artist Stanhope Forbes in this iconic scene...

much later fish were auctioned on the plinth in front of where the current harbour offices stand...

and eventually under a covered market built in the 1920s, when standing on boxes was obviously de-rigeur practice for buyers...

a scene often captured on canvas by local artist Bernard Evans...

and more recently by Henrietta Graham who will soon have six giant canvases adorning the road side of the fish market depicting a range of fishing industry scenes...

with the auctioneer surrounded by buyers bidding on individual boxes of fish which continues to this day - albeit in a much modernised and refrigerated environment.

That is all set to change on December the 8th 2020.

Twenty six years after a little-known Belgian company, Schelfout (now Aucxis) first gave a presentation to a small selection of Newlyn skippers and fish merchants, Newlyn will finally give way to tradition and connect to the 21st century and host a computer fish auction. The final 'shout' auction will be held on the 5th December at 6am.

The electronic market is being installed by a specialist auction company from Belgium called Aucxis. They also set up the markets in Brixham and Plymouth. 

To buy on the auction buyers will need to log onto a new website where two clock auctions will be run. The software is the same as that used by Brixham Fish Auction. Training will be provided for any buyers who need it in the week prior to the start. Separate invites will be sent out offering training.

Buyers will still be able to come to the market to view fish. Equally buyers will be able to participate in the auction from anywhere with internet access. 

As sales are completed through the auction, porters will place tickets on the bought boxes detailing indicating buyers.  A video conference meeting will allow any questions to be raised that relate to the new service.

For further information contact Stevensons in Newlyn: Tel 01736 362998.

The feasibility of automated collection of images and landings data – linking camera systems to fish grading machines

Cefas are currently funding a project using digital imaging to capture data from fish that are sold at auction. 

PROJECT SUMMARY: 

At major fish markets many landings are processed using automated grading machines where every fish is automatically weighed and recorded, providing Grading Machine Fish Weight (GMFW) data.

Typical grading machine used on fish markets.

However, to ensure the data can be efficiently and confidently used for fisheries advice, an effective system for data exchange still needs to be developed, and some data issues need to be resolved. These relate to marketing practices where some species are processed together; machine error where ice and/or individual fish stick together and are mistaken for individual fish; and errors if part of a landing is mislabelled. 

Fish data collected manually and fed via a light pen into a dedicated machine.

If grader machine technology were combined with automated image capture, the size of the fish could be calculated from the image and compared with the weight to provide biological parameters for fisheries science and condition factors for marketing. Species identification using Machine Learning (ML) would automatically resolve data issues and quality assure the data. If these data were made available for scientific purposes it could improve efficiencies and the spatial and temporal resolution of the biological data currently being collected. These images will also help develop machine learning and camera systems that can be used at sea. 

The public and consequentially buyers are increasingly interested in the provenance of the fish they purchase. Assurances about the sustainability of fishing practices and fisheries management and the back story about capture to plate have become important features of marketing fish products. Information about fish quality and related pricing is potentially useful to the catching sector as well as through the value chain. Cefas aim to work alongside Plymouth Trawler Agents (PTA) to investigate the development of this camera interface and how the data can contribute to an integrated information system that brings commercial benefits to the industry.

The feasibility of automated collection of images and landings data – linking camera systems to fish grading machines (FS004)

 

Fish is not the sole contentious issue in the bellicose Brexit trade talks between the UK and the European Union, but it is not a red herring. The issue preventing agreement is a mixed grill of disputes over factors such as fishing rights, control of a disputed aquatic zone, political concerns for coastal areas, and legal sovereignty. At first ,it seems insignificant because the economic and industrial factors are rather small compared with the total amount of the respective economies, but the fishy business touches on national emotions. Though an English person may be willing to forego the historic quintessential breakfast meal of kippers, the species is symbolic, as Prime Minister Boris Johnson showed when he waved a pair of kippers at the first official event of the Conservative party after he became prime minister. And what is more British than fish and chips, even though its concept and ingredients originally came from Sephardic Jews, immigrants from Northern Europe?

The fate of the UK-EU negotiations, going at a snail’s pace for years, remains uncertain even after years of talks over Brexit. On October 16, 2020 Boris Johnson declared that the European Union had refused to agree to a free trade deal with the UK, and therefore his country was prepared to leave the EU at the end of the transition period on December 31, 2020, with no trade deal. Britain would conduct future trade talks with the EU on the basis of international WTO terms. However, the UK formally left the EU on January 31, 2020, but is bound by EU rules until the end of 2020.

There are a multitude of Brexit issues to be solved, but presently most divisive are two main items. One is the settling of level playing field conditions for economic issues, environment, workers’ rights, taxation, state aid, and financial assistance given by government to business, to ensure common rules and standards for fair and open competition.

The second issue is fishing rights and factors related to it: control of the aquatic zone, competition of rival fleets, decline of coastal towns once prosperous from the fishing business, exercise of sovereignty and freedom of national action in deciding fishing rights and quotas.

There are two relevant international understandings. The first is that under present international arrangements formulated by the UN in 1982 each country has a 12-nautical-mile territorial sea zone, and an Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), that can extend up to 200 nautical miles from the coastline in which a sovereign state has preeminent, special fishing rights and marine resources over that area. In the EU, country zones, including that of UK until Brexit is implemented, are merged into one joint EU zone, open to fishermen from all member states. The EU has access to the UK’s 200-mile zone, apart from the first 12 miles from the British coast, and has a quota on what its fleets can catch. In fact, that quota has been more than half of the catch in British waters. The catch is worth 750 million euros. About 60%, even 80% in Cornwall, of the tonnage landed from British waters is caught by foreign boats. After Brexit, the UK will have sole control of its EEZ, and the right to decide which countries can fish there, and how much fish they can catch.

The second international understanding is the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) created to maintain fish stock and fishing practices that do not harm the ability of fish populations to reproduce. By this policy, the EU sets quotas by which member states can catch specific percentages and volumes of each species of fish. After Brexit, the UK wants to end this system, to set its own quotas after negotiations, and control who can fish in its waters. The UK argues that the CFP has cost British fishing jobs, and that British fishing rights were traded away in 1973 when the UK joined the EEC, European Economic Community.

As a result, the UK wants to end the present system and make foreign access to its waters and quotas on species of fish in its EEZ result from annual talks. In contrast the EU wants to maintain the existing arrangement, and to avoid economic dislocation, not to have negotiations every year. On this point, French President Emmanuel Macron, perhaps speaking in a posture of French grandeur, has been adamant, arguing that annual negotiations will make it impossible for the industry to make investment decisions and that French fishermen will not be sacrificed for Brexit.

The intensity of the differences between the UK and EU is surprising because the economics involved and the number of people employed would not seem to make fish so important as to block trade agreements. Fishing is a small part of the economies in Britain and France.

Disregarding political factors, the EU fishing sector employs about 180,000 people and accounts for less than 1% of EU economic output. France, a country with 65 fishing harbors, has 7,300 vessels, of which 2,500 are in overseas territories. Its industry employs 10,000 people in Metropolitan France, and 4,000 in overseas territories.

The British fishing fleet consists of 6,000 vessels with 12,000 fishermen, and 24,000 altogether in fishing and fish processing industries, about 0.1% of the 33 million work force in pre-COVID-19 days. Fishing in British waters , which are rich in herring, mackerel, sole, and shellfish, especially langoustine, was worth 784 million pounds, 0,12% of GDP in 2018, compared with 132 trillion pounds in financial services. The EU accounts for 43 % of UK exports, and 51% of UK imports.

Naturally, there are many complications. One, troublesome because of its discussion of independence, and its concern to retain access to EU markets, is that Scotland accounts for 64% of all UK fish landings while England accounts for 28%, and this may affect negotiations.

Another is that there are competing fishing interests; deep sea against inshore; industrial and family scale boats; fishers against processors. A third factor is that a considerable part of the British quota has been carried out by boats of EU countries. More than 60% of tonnage landed in Britain is caught by foreign boats. In addition, the majority of fish, 70%, eaten in UK is imported, especially cod (83%) and haddock (58%), while it exports 80% of what is caught.

The issue of the fishing industry has both national and international pertinence. Fishing has been declining in the UK, partly because of declining stocks, and partly because of the quota imposed on the amount of the catch to be brought ashore. It is a poignant memory of the past that Grimsby once was the largest fishing port in the world. For both UK and France fishing has symbolic overtones, symbols of sovereignty, useful in the high-stakes game of political brinkmanship.

The international problem is that a considerable part of the world’s predatory fish has disappeared, the result of a number of factors; the growing world demand for seafood; the increase in the global fleet of efficient boats; the rapid increase in the armada of Chinese industrial fishing boats which catch the largest amount of fish, and account for about half of the world’s fishing activity; and the reality that the amount of tonnage caught has been much less because the average size of the fish caught is much smaller than in the past, possibly due to the fact it is the mainly the smaller fish that escape the nets.

Foreign companies at present own the rights to catch more than 130,000 tons of fish a year, that are part of UK’s fishing quota. Vessels from these companies, in Iceland, Spain, and the Netherlands account for 55% of the British quota’s annual value. Not surprisingly Boris Johnson is entering the trade battle with the slogan “British fishing grounds are first and foremost for British boats.”

Interestingly this story appeared on the American Thinker website - a site devoted to events in the world that might affect Amercians.

Artificial Intelligence and Remote Electronic monitoring - two sides of the same coin.

Throughout history, fishing seems never to be far from the heart of politics as this story from Wired - a technical IT website:

Faculty advised officials on how to police post-Brexit fishing waters. The AI firm, which previously worked for Dominic Cummings, has been helping the government come up with technological solutions for the slippery post-Brexit fish issue 

AIS track image courtesy of VesselTracker.

Faculty, the artificial intelligence firm that previously worked for Dominic Cummings’s Vote Leave campaign, has been awarded a public contract to help the government assess the use of machine learning to secure Britain’s post-Brexit fishing waters.

According to the description of a £50,000 contract awarded to Faculty in March 2020, the UK’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) was seeking to better understand how artificial intelligence systems could be leveraged to spot vessels engaging in illegal, unlicensed or unreported fishing in Britain’s waters.

The contract itself, published on the government’s Contract Finder platform, established that Faculty would “assess the potential of innovative technological solutions (specifically, machine learning) for sea fisheries control and enforcement”. The company was listed as a processor of public data and the data of people involved in sea fishing during the course of its work.

Fish has emerged as a particularly slippery issue and threatens to sink the prospect of a post-Brexit trade deal with the European Union. On Friday, in a speech declaring that the UK should ready itself for “an Australia-style” future with no trade deal, prime minister Boris Johnson listed taking back control of fisheries as one of the key positives of crashing out of the EU’s single market. If no deal materialises by the end of December, Britain will have to extricate itself from the EU common fisheries policy after over four decades, with nothing to replace it. The UK is already poised to start patrolling its seas to keep out European vessels, which will no longer be automatically allowed to fish in British waters under a no-deal scenario.

Scott Edwards, an expert in maritime security from the University of Bristol says that AI is increasingly regarded as a promising tool to make sense of vast reams of maritime data pool coming from satellites, transponders, aerial photography and various other sources. “Machine learning [can be used] to identify patterns and spot which vessels stand out as potentially being involved in illegal fishing,” Edwards says. Algorithms using machine learning might be able to quickly single out vessels which are moving evasively or appear to be tampering with their Automatic Identification Systems, and flag them as suspicious.

Faculty’s maritime interests don’t stop with the Defra contract. Earlier this week, the firm announced that it has started working with the Maritime and Coastguard Agency to provide AI tools to boost “search and rescue” operations – an increasingly hot-button topic in the wake of the arrival of over 4,000 asylum seekers in small boats since the start of the year. Over the past few months, Faculty has been awarded some lucrative government contracts to help officials deal with the coronavirus crisis. Reports have highlighted the firm’s close links to senior Number 10 advisor Cummings, who hired Faculty when heading the pro-Brexit campaign in 2016, and Ben Warner, Cummings’s right-hand man – and brother of Faculty’s CEO Marc. Faculty did not respond to a request for comment by the time of publication.

Machine learning wasn’t the only technology Defra was keen to delve into when charting the UK’s post-Brexit fishery future. Also in March, a £39,000 contract was awarded to technology consultancy Frazer-Nash, aimed at helping Defra make sense of how drones could be used to better defend Britain’s fish stock. William Barnes, Frazer-Nash’s Unmanned Aerial Systems service lead, who was part of the team working on the Defra project, explains that the usage of drones in fisheries enforcement is evolving and hard to navigate.

“There is a breadth of different technologies – that’s really the question that Defra asked: they recognise the relative difference between technologies from different aircraft, different sensing platforms, different ground stations,” Barnes says. “And how you put them together depends on what is needed. It’s never going to be a one-size-fits-all right.” For instance, drones could be used in a rapid-response way – alerting the navy to fishing boats illegally hauling fish and scallops in – or as a planning tool, keeping an eye on general trends taking place in the British seas.

While several countries have been looking into the use of drones to surveil their fishing zones, the technology is still relatively untested, says Edwards. “There have been a couple of countries using camera-equipped drones for this: the Seychelles is probably the flagship one with a project called Fishguard,” he says. “It still hasn’t been fully implemented, and they had to do a lot of testing because of problems like bad weather. It’s not actually that easy to establish.”

Edwards notes that drones and AI have to go “hand in hand,” with images captured by drones then used to refine machine learning algorithm’s detection mechanisms, and basic AI helping drones on a patrol to decide which vessels to track.

A Defra spokesperson says that the department, alongside the Marine Management Organisation, a public body that helps regulate Britain’s waters, is “exploring how technology can innovate and enhance fisheries monitoring and surveillance methods.” This includes sensor imagery, autonomous monitoring and machine learning, the spokesperson adds, which could potentially complement existing systems.” More details on this would be available later this year, the spokesperson says. Two more Defra contracts on Contract Finder, whose descriptions are almost identical to those of the contracts awarded to Faculty and Frazer-Nash and appear as “closed” – a term suggesting that the contract hasn’t been awarded.

Edwards says that while the potential of drones and AI for fisheries enforcement is promising, full implementation will take time. In the meantime, the UK will likely focus on beefing up patrols. Currently, the navy’s Fishery Protection Squadron counts five ships, although the government has announced plans to treble that capability. “The drones can help but only if they've been implemented as part of a wider approach,” says Edwards.

Gian Volpicelli is WIRED's politics editor. He tweets from @Gmvolpi

Around the same time this shout out to the fishing industry was coming out of Defra:

The Government has opened a call for evidence to examine whether monitoring technology could be used more widely on fishing boats operating in English waters to help support the sector by preventing overfishing. Now that the UK has left the EU, the Government is seeking to utilise the latest technology to better support the industry. These systems could help improve the management of our fisheries, prevent overfishing and ensure the UK has a thriving and environmentally sustainable fishing sector by improving the data that is available to the industry on fish stocks.

Remote Electronic Monitoring systems can consist of automatic cameras, GPS, sensors or other monitoring measures. Its uses can include gathering data on the amount of fish, their sizes and all the different species present and can help fishermen show they are fishing in line with their catch allowances, supporting the sector to become more sustainable.

Exploring this technology and its benefits for the fishing sector and our marine environment is one of many ways the Government is making use of new powers as an independent coastal state.

Fisheries Minister Victoria Prentis said:

"As we take back control of our fisheries, we want to ensure a sustainable and thriving fishing industry.

Remote Electronic Monitoring technology could provide important information on the state of our fish stocks and help shape how we manage our fisheries in the future. We therefore want to hear from those who will be affected by its use and give them a say in how we manage our fisheries as an independent coastal state.

While the technology is already being used on a voluntary basis by some fishing vessels to show compliance with the landing obligation – which prohibits the discarding of fish – via the English Fully Documented Fisheries scheme, the call for evidence seeks views on expanding its use in English waters."  

The call for evidence also explores whether it is better suited for certain fishing vessels, for example based on the size of the vessel or vessels that use different types of fishing gear, as well as whether there are other technologies which are more suitable.

Defra is also exploring other uses of this technology including capturing data on fish stocks. The ability to gather data more accurately will help the government better understand the most used fishing equipment and industry preferences, the health of our fish stocks as well as the health of our wider marine environment.

The call for evidence covers vessels operating in English waters. The Government will continue to work with all parts of the UK to deliver a coherent policy which reflects devolution settlements. This will be followed up by a formal consultation in 2021.

You can take the survey and let Defra know your thoughts and vies here: