Why Newlyn needs to grow.

A combination of poor weather which saw the entire fleet plus large visiting boats forced to tie up in Newlyn for the best part of a week highlighted a growing problem for the port - it isn't big enough for modern boats...

as this close-up shows, almost all the boats in this photo are aground, some the potential to damage themselves or the vessels they lay against...

even some of the netters, by no means the largest vessels in the feet, but modern deep-drafted vessels are taking the bottom well before low water on increasingly bigger, and therefore lower, tides...

creating a whole new outer harbour from the Sandy Cove area using stone from Penlee Quarry ...

Sandy Cove development site

(how many harbours have a ready-made supply of stone on its doorstep?) would not only provide much needed shore space but also provide deep-water berths for modern fishing vessels - but also larger visiting yachts ocean going yachts, wind farm support or even ferries. The harbour has recently put together a proposal based on the wishes of current harbour users which can be viewed (and comments added) here:

Click here to see the Newlyn Harbour Expansion Plans

 

Lessons in fishermen-centered product design

 Capturing “captain” journeys from dock to database

A table holding 15 pieces of paper labeled ‘captain’s journey’ with many small yellow sticky notes on each. The stickies have tiny handwritten notes on them and there’s a pile of colored pends and blank sticky note pads in the lower right corner.

Digital data collection is becoming the norm in every field, including commercial fishing. While there are high tech vessels with constant satellite connections, that’s a fraction of the 2.8m global fleet, including the 75,000 or so commercial fishing boats in the United States[1]. That means fishing software and hardware needs to work with limited connectivity as well as glare, saltwater, and — ideally — big rubber gloves. Many of these products need to feed into regulatory systems, so you’ll have to account for that on the backend, and while you may be in a position to mandate use of your app regardless of usability ignoring UX/UI altogether generally leads to lackluster adoption or worse unintended consequences. All this in a space where public budgets are tight and private profit margins are thin.

These aren’t new challenges for anyone working in civic tech (except maybe the saltwater corrosion) and we’re immensely grateful for the documentation that other designers and product managers have shared about their experiences. We’re offering these reflections in the interest of adding to that body of knowledge and expanding the chapter on fisheries. We had the chance to support a team at NOAA Fisheries’ Northwest Fisheries Science Center and support them in applying modern product development practices to a new multi-function platform for fishermen[2]. Here are our takeaways:

The benefits of partnership

We came into the project through a public-private partnership, where the core work was done by an internal team with government funding, while our team had philanthropic funding from the Net Gains Alliance to augment their work and fill gaps. We had strong and dedicated agency partners but it was a small team with a long backlog. We offered general PM support and took on tasks that were easier for an external partner to do. For example, as a number of groups have pointed out, the Paperwork Reduction Act limits federal agencies’ ability to do surveys, especially on topics that are considered to change rapidly like mobile device ownership. We looked at publicly available survey data, but, as we quickly learned, general smartphone trends were not indicative of what devices were in the hands of our target fishermen. Our team had the capacity and flexibility to do design interviews, especially before we had anything to test, and we could add a layer of privacy protection in how we synthesized and stripped personal details out of our reports. Also, we could pay for snacks and coffee, which are essential to good conversations and often excluded from government budgets.

Keep the internal users engaged

The lead developers set up bi-weekly check ins with the internal agency teams, including managers and the staff working on compliance and enforcement. If you’re in the private sector reading this we can hear you rolling your eyes at something that might seem blindingly obvious but treating your agency colleagues as customers who should be engaged with and delighted by your products is still a bit of a culture shift in civic tech, especially in agencies that have not been first in the digital transformation queue, like many natural resource agencies. Agency staff are used to frequent, long meetings; they are less familiar with two-week sprints that result in new wireframes based on the feedback they provided last time. We wrote up some guides for the NOAA Fisheries team (drawing heavily on work from 18F and USDS) that mainly served to reinforce the best practices they were already deploying, tie them to other civic tech efforts, and make them fishier. Getting the internal users accustomed to regular check-ins made discussions easier once we had to start making tradeoffs between fishermen’s and managers’ requirements. 

We made wall posters illustrating Lean Design for fish

Recruiting fishermen testers took more time than we anticipated

We were doing this in 2020, when COVID-19 meant everything took longer than expected, but still it was quickly clear that we had an uphill job working in a community that was unfamiliar with user testing. Kate’s worked in and around West Coast fisheries for over a decade and contacted fishermen she knew, including ones who’d participated in design sessions on other projects. We had agency staff with longstanding industry relationships help with outreach. We offered to run tests on the weekends, early in the morning and late at night. We tried to set up an in-person testing event, but COVID-19 restrictions shut that down. Overall it took more than a month to build our first testing group and we didn’t get the full range of perspectives we wanted (operating systems, vessel configurations, ports). We asked the people who did participate to recruit their friends and family. Once people had participated, we asked them if they’d be willing to do a second session later we could show how we’d incorporated their feedback, which most agreed to.

We paid them

We asked for an hour of their time and tried to wrap up our discussion on time, although some wanted to talk longer. For that, we offered them $100 in compensation, which some declined. We advertised that we were paying testers in our recruitment emails but this did not seem to affect our recruitment. We made the decision to compensate people before COVID-19 cases started spiking in the U.S. and we were glad we did once ports and seafood supply chains started shutting down and fishermen were tied up at the dock. Even without a pandemic, we support compensating participants when you can as a matter of fairness and because it’s common practice in the private sector, sending a signal that fisheries and natural resource tech is as worthy of good design.

It was worth it

Even with all our constraints we got so many of the great outcomes you want out of design testing: original ‘brilliant’ ideas were scrapped and iterated, testers were delighted by things no one thought of as ‘features,’ small changes brought big delights, and bugs were squashed. Maybe most importantly, the testing sessions offered a dialogue opportunity between agency staff and fishermen based on listening and learning, not regulating. The development team had asked to be on the virtual testing sessions to hear feedback firsthand. We gave testers the option to talk just with us or have agency staff on as well and all opted to let staff participate. This led to some real-time ‘a-ha’ moments about the product design, and about the way the platform would operate inside a larger political and management context, one where the developers had limited control. There were things the apps couldn’t change, but for what they could do, and what they needed to do, they’re doing a better job of it because of testing and the input of fishermen.

[1] FAO 2018 Statistics and that’s an estimate.

[2] We’re saying “fishermen” because that’s the term people asked us to use. There’s a whole paper on “Should we call them fishers or fishermen?” if you want to dive into the terms, and we tried out a few other words like “captain” as we went along but here we’re going with what they asked to be called.

Full story: https://kwing.medium.com/lessons-in-fishermen-centered-product-design-80f54cbaef1b  

Government Plans To Revive Shellfish Exports By The Winter By Building Purification Sites In The UK

 

Live oysters from Fal Oyster

The government is planning to build purification sites in the UK so shellfish businesses which have been shut out from the European Union since January can resume exporting mussels and cockles to the continent this winter, Environment Secretary George Eustice has said. 

The move is a dramatic u-turn on the messaging from Eustice's Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, which earlier this year told affected traders that they would be able to continue sending live shellfish to European buyers, despite rules prohibiting shellfish caught in the UK's class B waters from entering the EU. It threatened to push British sellers of cockles, mussels and other shellfish in areas like Cornwall, Cumbria and Wales towards financial ruin. 

Last month PoliticsHome revealed the European Commission told the UK industry that the new rules were in fact permanent and affected all shellfish caught in the UK's class B waters. And speaking to this website, Eustice has now said that the government will use some of its £100m fisheries fund to help businesses impacted by the EU's block on live shellfish caught in class B waters build their own facilities for purifiying their catch before the next trading season at the end of the year. 

He has accused Brussels of changing its position on shellfish exports entering the continent from the UK. Eustice is asking the EU to change its mind and has requested a meeting with the European Commission. However, "at the moment is they are not in a position to discuss it," he said. The minister revealed that if Brussels did not change its rules, the government would get to work on building facilities in the UK so traders could purify — or depurate — their shellfish before exporting them to the continent. 

The EU prohbition affects shellfish that are not ready for human consumption and before January 1st were purified after reaching the continent. "We are having conversations with member states like France and a lot of their restaurants actually want this trade to continue as it’s built around buying shellfish from class B waters that they then depurate on site," he said. “We'll work with the European Commission to see if we can get this trade unblocked and moving again. “If though, it’s a change of policy that the EU intend to maintain, the next option for us is to support our own industry by identifying alternative markets, as there is a global trade in these products, and also by investing in depuration facilities so we can do purification here as well. “We’d probably take the new £100m UK-wide fisheries fund, that is designed to invest in fishing communities as well as port and processing capacity, and use it to support businesses make that sort of investment so that they’d be able to depurate their own goods for the next season”.

The Cabinet minsiter admitted that the first few weeks of Brexit had been "quite a steep learning curve" for businesses and officials on both sides of the Channel. Fish and meat exporters in particular have struggled to adapt to the plethora of new customs and health paperwork. Delays to exports have led some European customers to cancel orders from the UK, resulting in huge financial losses, while some businesses have already been forced to close. However, Eustice insisted that it was an "improving situation" at the borders. "There were some quite difficult teething problems in the first few weeks of January but generally speaking, what we are finding now is that the big salmon producers in Scotland are getting goods through in 24 hours, which is what they are aiming for," he said. "The average time taken to clear Border Control Posts in France has fallen quite considerably. More than half are getting through within an hour and more than 90% are clearing customs within three hours”. 

Asked whether he understood why fish traders struggling to get to grips with the new red tape said they felt betrayed by ministers, Eustice admitted that the government "didn't get everything we wanted" in its post-Brexit trade agreement with the EU and "that's no secret". But he stressed that: “A consequence of leaving the single market and customs union is that there is additional administration and businesses would always rather not do that”. The Cabinet minister confirmed reports by PoliticsHome and others that the government was "considering" relaxing plans to introduce checks on EU imports in April and July. 

The government's stated plan is to implement some Sanitary & Phytosanitary checks on animal and plant goods on April 1st and then introduce the full range of post-Brexit customs, health and security checks on July 1st. However, a number of ports have said that they will not be ready to carry out these checks, while industry groups have warned that delays at the border will disrupt supplies of items like vegetables, cheese and wine as food retailers and hospitality begins to reopen in the next few months. “We always keep all of these things under review," Eustice said. “The important thing to say is we have already recruited the first wave of staff through the Port Health Authorities to carry out the SPS checks from April. Around 100 are in place and are already trained. “There is a concern raised by some importers about whether exporters on the EU side are prepared and whether they can get access to vets. 

We are looking at that carefully. “The important thing is on import checks, it’s open to us to adopt a more pragmatic approach and adjust things as we see fit. "But it is important that we start to implement some processes so that people get used to the journey that they’re on and we don’t keep kicking the can down the road”. He added: “It’s something we are considering because it’s about the checks that we put in place for imports and something we have control over in a way we don’t have on the other side of the channel. “It’s already the case that we have taken a more pragmatic approach to this than the EU. We decided not to put in any SPS checks at all at the start of January even though the EU did. “Leaving the single market is a big change and we want businesses to have the space and time to adjust, whether they are exporters or importers of goods from the EU”.

https://www.politicshome.com/news/article/government-build-shellfish-purification-sites-eu-ban-exclusive @adampayne26 

EP fisheries control vote: Two steps forward, one giant step back Published on March 11, 2021

European Parliament votes for modern and transparent fisheries, but opens grave loophole.

The EU Fisheries Control Coalition, where FishSec is a member, applauds the positive steps taken by the European Parliament towards more transparent fisheries and traceable seafood. With their vote in plenary this week, EU parliamentarians have called for all fishing vessels to report everything they catch, including sensitive and protected species, which will make data for over 49,000 EU vessels available for the first time. Further, EU vessels will be tracked through electronic monitoring tools, seafood available in the EU market will be digitally traceable from net to plate, and EU Member States will be required to report more transparently on their control measures.

At the same time, the decision to significantly backtrack on accurate reporting of seafood catches casts a dark shadow over the voting outcome, as up to 40% of catches (and up to 50% in the case of tuna) may now be omitted from the EU fleet’s records. This would undermine scientific data to evaluate the status of fish stocks, could render fisheries control efforts ineffective, and will put the last decade of progress for seafood sustainability and marine species’ recovery at serious risk – as the European Commission itself has warned.

On behalf of the The EU Fisheries Control Coalition, Marta Marrero Martin, Director of Ocean Governance at The Nature Conservancy said: “Today, MEPs displayed the courage needed to turn the tide on overfishing by voting to make Remote Electronic Monitoring mandatory on vessels that are at a high risk of not complying with the rules. This is unfortunately overshadowed by the vote to extend the so-called ‘margin of tolerance’ for fishers, which will allow up to four in ten fish to go missing from the records, signaling a huge blow for sustainability. MEPs and Member States must urgently reverse this course in their upcoming negotiations, while also going one step further by ensuring that cameras record the incidental catch of sensitive and protected species.”

Andrea Ripol, Fisheries Policy Officer at Seas At Risk said: “Today’s vote is a mixed bag for dolphins, seabirds and turtles across the EU. Even though the mandatory collection of data on incidental catches in logbooks is a bold and promising step to help reverse biodiversity loss, the rejection of Remote Electronic Monitoring for data collection on sensitive species undermines its effectiveness, as it is an essential tool to ensure the data is recorded accurately.”

Katrin Vilhelm Poulsen, Senior Seafood Policy Officer at WWF European Policy Office said: “As the EU imports the majority of its seafood, the introduction of digital traceability from sea to plate will bolster the EU’s fight against illegal fishing and lay the groundwork for providing clear information to European consumers. However, this milestone achievement in the fight against illegal fishing internationally is undermined by the parallel decision to legalise underreporting for European vessels.”

Vanya Vulperhorst, Campaign Director, Illegal fishing and Transparency at Oceana said: “We welcome the outcome that all EU vessels – including 49,000 small-scale vessels – will have to report their catches and track their location, and that Member States can no longer hide information about their control efforts from the public. But MEPs’ foolish vote in favour of fishers underreporting up to 40% of their catches risks reversing decades of recovering fish populations.”

Steve Trent, Executive Director at the Environmental Justice Foundation said: “More transparent reporting by EU Member States on their fisheries controls and abolishing their veto to publish fisheries information mean the EU can continue to be a pioneer in the effort for a transparent global fisheries sector. Yet, crucially, the giant misstep of allowing four in ten fish to go missing from the records must now urgently be remedied by MEPs and Member States in their upcoming negotiations.”

Positive outcomes from the European Parliament vote include:

• Fishing vessels of 12 metres length or more that are at high risk of discarding unwanted catches (a violation of the EU Common Fisheries Policy) will be required to use Remote Electronic Monitoring, including CCTV cameras.
• Seafood products will need to be digitally traceable from the point of catch to the point of retail, with the same requirements for products sourced from EU and non-EU countries.
• Thanks to more transparent reporting provisions, European citizens and decision makers will have more information on how EU Member States implement EU fishing rules and manage fisheries resources.
• All EU fishing vessels – including over 49,000 small-scale vessels – are required to have a location tracker and to report their catches.

The negative aspects include:

• The increased margin of error that fishers have to estimate their catches will allow up to 40% of caught seafood to go missing from the EU fleet’s records; in the case of tuna, even up to 50% of catches may now never be reported.
• The requirement of Remote Electronic Monitoring (including CCTV) on vessels to monitor and curb the bycatch of sensitive species, including dolphins, seals and seabirds, has been rejected.

With the European Parliament’s position on the fisheries Control Regulation now adopted, Members of the European Parliament, the representatives from EU Member States and the European Commission are scheduled to begin negotiations to finalise the future fisheries control system later this summer.

It is crucial that the gains secured for sustainable fishing and healthy seas in Wednesday night’s vote are maintained in the trilogue discussions. However, both MEPs and EU Member States must urgently remedy the dramatic increase in the margin fishers receive to estimate their catches. The European Commission has warned that the 40-50% of catches missing from fishers’ logbooks could jeopardise the recovery of fish stocks in European seas, putting the future of fisheries at risk and stands in stark contrast to the goals of the European Green Deal. It is now up to EU parliamentarians, EU Member States and the Commission to make sure the robustness of our fisheries control system will not be undermined by this giant misstep.

The harbour is full of boats and the storm hasn't even arrived yet.

It's not just the small visiting beam trawlers chasing soles...

but also some of the biggest in the Brixham fleet like the Georgina, William and Julie of Ladram

along with the biggest beam trawler in the south west, the Enterprise...

the Charisma has had a name change to the Charisma of Ladram reflecting her change of ownership in joining the rest of the Ladram fleet...

the Lucy Too makes her way back to a berth...

passing dwarfed by PZ99...

plenty of work still be done on the Twilight III...

the MCA has recently posted an M Notice asking skippers to check hydrostatic releases fittings...

a sure sign the weather is poor, there's a French boat in port...

looking at the forecast the trawls on these three won't be being dragged along the sea bed for a day or two yet ...

the weather means the guys on the Unity can set to mending their twin rig trawls.

 

These guys need more than words.

Even when MPs get the chance to talk directly to a fishermen - in this case skipper David Stevens was sat in the wheelhouse of his trawler - they still seem unable to do anything other than espouse the party line. How on earth is that kind of response going to help him (having recently invested several million pounds in a new vessel) or all the other skippers affected by the deal? These guys don't need platitudes, the fishing support grant - if eligible - is just sticking plaster over a gaping wound.

Scale your brill and buy tinned whiting - God help us!

Spoiler Alert - It's not April the 1st! (though you might not believe it)

If it wasn't so serious, this new £200,000 advertising campaign from the Government urging the population to eat more fish would be funny - but it is not - funny that it is.

How can they get it this wrong?

For instance, the campaign material suggests:

• you need to scale brill - brill don't have scales
• you can buy tinned brill?
• you can buy tinned whiting? 
• you should keep Dover sole for a few days so the flesh becomes firm
• you can buy Atlantic Wolf fish - there's never been one landed in Newlyn and  there will be only a handful of UK boats, if any, catch them on a regular basis
• and you buy turbot, monkfish and scallops - well with a big enough food budget sure - buy most people to eat on a regular basis?

Obviously well intentioned but who or where on earth did they go to get their market research - let's hope it wasn't anyone at Seafish who are normally responsible for marketing fish in the UK who now, as a result of Brexit, are free to promote British fish in a way they were, so we were led to believe, unable to do while we were in the EU.

To dismiss the mistakes in this campaign as 'trivial' is an insult to all the fishermen and women who put their lives on the line every time they go to sea to put food on our plates. 'Tinned brill' my arse.

PS There's a prize for a photograph of tinned brill or whiting on a UK supermarket shelf - and no Photoshopping!