Fishing news - e-logs books go live!

As of this month all fishing vessels over 15 metres (as an example the gill netter, Ajax is 16m) have to use an electronic system of reporting their every move. 

Electronic logbooks will replace paper logbooks, which will be withdrawn for over 12 metre vessels. Vessels will have to submit all daily activity by midnight UTC. This applies whether a vessel is fishing or not during the voyage, and in any waters.

All fishing activity submitted electronically may be viewed by Royal Navy patrol vessels as well as fisheries administration and enforcement staff. The information submitted will be also available to inspectors of other member states of the EU and third countries while vessels are in their waters.

Approved software has been available in the UK since May 2010. Vessels over 24 metres overall length have been electronic logbook only since 18 April 2012.

Vessels over 15 metres overall length are required to be electronic logbook compliant by 31 May 2012. Grant aid is available if software is purchased by this date and claimed for before 1 July 2012.

Owners of vessels between 12 and 15 metres in overall length will be notified in June 2012 of the dates to be electronic logbook only and when grant aid will be available.

Approved software has been through an extensive testing process commissioned by the UK fisheries administrations testing agent, NCC Group. This is to ensure that it meets the published specification required to communicate with the central system – the UK Hub.

Of course, in order to comply with the regulations every wheelhouse needs to find a secure, dry and easily accessible space to operate a PC, in the case above on a boat well over 15m this is not too much of an issue......

the list of checks for just a single entry look daunting.......

with the screen vaguley reproducing what has been around in paper for for years in the shape of........

the EU Fishing Logbook........

with its colour coded NCR (no carbon required) pages........

that need to be completed as and when fishing operations begin, end, change and at the end of every working day.........

there are still some wrinkles in the system - for instance many netters work several sets of gear with differenet mesh sizes and the e-log only allows one size........

many of the netters working west of Cornwall find themselves fishing either side of the Irish Zone - and each time they cross 'the line' they have to record the information in the log - just as well fish can't access this information or they could pull some mean surprises on the boats!


A big issue for the skipper at sea will be the reliability of the system - most people are only too well aware of the fickleness with which PCs operate - and many fishermen would hardly class themselves as highly IT literate - and yet they will be expected to deal with all the vagaries of the Windows operating system running on a laptop or desktop installed in the less than ideal environment of the wheelhouse with no access to an IT helpline on the end of the phone - and all that after a long hard day catching fish, keeping watch and dealing with life aboard. Let's hope the MMO shows some understanding when it comes to allowing for the times when the system 'crashes', 'freezes' or worse still gives the BSOD or 'blue screen of death' and the skipper is at a loss as to how to get things up and running again.