Artisanal Fishermen Congress Europe - a way forward

Small-scale fishing vessels account for 80% of Europe's fishing sector, but as the vast majority of fishing quotas and EU subsidies have favoured industrial fishing operations, which have in many cases accelerated the depletion of fish stocks and environmental damage to our seas, the voices of small scale fishermen have largely been ignored.

Over 60% of European fish stocks are over-exploited  Now, small-scale fishermen from across Europe are joining forces to put sustainable, artisanal and low-impact fishing at the heart of the on-going reform of European Union (EU) Common Fisheries Policy (CFP). 

Read one highly sceptical fisherman's road to Damascus conversion account of the trip!

Worst weekend weather update

The last few ays have seen extrem weather conditions in the North East Atlantic - luckily, Cornwall and the fleet have escaped the worst effects of the weather system that traversed the Atlantic last week.

Here is an extract from GCaptiain's blog:

Last weekend saw an unusually intense hurricane force extratropical storm low over the North Atlantic. An active weather pattern started showing up on computer models more than a week earlier and by the 21st, the official NOAA “96 hour North Atlantic surface forecast chart” showed a rapidly deepening 977mb storm low over the central North Atlantic for 12Z Friday January 25th moving northeastward with a forecasted central pressure dropping to 933mb by 12Z on Saturday the 26th!

See the rest of the post and charts here.

Guess who?

This was the cover of the long defunct Professional Fisherman. Name the year, the boat and the crew members buried in fish!

Seafish - Project Inshore

The Seafish-led project to secure the future of England’s small-scale fisheries is making significant progress through its three-year plan. Stage One reports are now available for download and work is underway on the Stage Two pre-assessment phase.

Stage One mapped the ‘inshore fisheries’ for the first time, profiling all of them with a biological analysis of 57 different species, highlighting their commercial importance. These first significant milestones reached by the project detail key commercial fisheries, the fishing gear types they use and species fished to develop a list of fisheries that will progress to Stage Two, the ‘pre-assessment’ phase.

Expected to report in April 2013, Stage Two will be a gap analysis (based around the MSC pre-assessment process) to determine what is working well in the English inshore sector, what needs improvement, and to identify examples of best practice as well as giving an early idea of how each fishery will measure up against the MSC Standard for sustainable fishing. This will highlight crucial areas for development and provide a basis for Inshore Fisheries & Conservation Authorities (IFCAs) and key industry stakeholders to work together and implement positive change.

Matt Watson, MSC's English Fisheries Outreach Officer, said: "Work is moving forward quickly with a huge amount of information collated in the Stage One reports, used as the basis to inform the Stage Two gap analysis work. The Stage One reports are now publicly available on the Project Inshore pages of the Seafish website and I urge everyone with an interest to have a look at these reports."

Richard Caslake of Seafish said: "We are delighted to see Project Inshore progressing on target and reaching significant milestones. This is an important initiative for the industry and we would urge all those with an interest to have a look at the reports and continue to give their valuable feedback."

Project Inshore is a three-year programme that will provide sustainability reports for each of the IFCAs, mapping all English inshore fisheries to showcase best practice. Set to be completed in 2015, it covers over 2,000 small fishing boats along the coast of England which make up nearly three quarters of England’s fishing fleet.

More Information

The project is funded by the European Fisheries Fund, Sustainable Fisheries Fund, Seafish and supply chain partners.

Partners in the project include the Marine Stewardship Council, Seafish and the Shellfish Association of Great Britain (SAGB).

Project Inshore was launched on 8th June 2012 coinciding with World Ocean’s Day and the two stage one reports can be downloaded on the Seafish website.

Further details of the project here: About the project

Project stages and timelines

Stage One - Fishery Analysis (due November 2012)

Including a broad review of English inshore Fisheries including: • Species profiles important commercial species for the inshore sector. • Value and seasonality of landings for key ports for the inshore sector. • Regionalised fishery reports by IFCA district. • Inshore fleet characteristics including gear types used and fisheries targeted. • Habitat maps.

Stage Two - Gap Analysis (April 2013 •This will use the MSC Pre-Assessment as a gap analysis on English inshore fisheries, looking at each species and gear type within each IFCA area, as well as biological stock units across IFCA areas.

Stage Three (Early 2014) •The development of sustainability reports for each IFCA area. This will highlight commonalities and potential efficiencies between regions, species and gears and provide a roadmap for the future management and sustainability of all of the English inshore fisheries. •Follow up and support for interested fisheries wishing to move into full MSC assessment (to mid 2015).

Independent auditors The majority of Project Inshore assessment work will be carried out by Food Certification International (FCI), an accredited independent Certifier specialising in the commercial fisheries sector. Seafish and the MSC will provide on-the-ground support for fisheries and IFCAs. Advisory Group

The MSC will establish a multi-stakeholder Advisory Group made up of key organisations from within the sector to feed into the work of Project Inshore and help disseminate information about the project. The Advisory Group represents diverse experiences, geographies and interests in relation to the English inshore industry. The Advisory Group meets twice a year in London.

The Advisory Group is formed from the following organisations:

• Association of Inshore Fisheries and Conservation Authorities (IFCA)
• Defra
• Direct Seafoods
• Industry representation
• Marks & Spencers
• Marine Stewardship Council
• Natural England
• National Federation of Fishermen's Organisations
• Seafish
• Shellfish Association of Great Britain
• WWF


Comment:

Blue-green involvement:
It is when projects like this come on stream that you might now begin to take not of how and from whom NGOs and charitably finded bodies like the WWF receive their monies - an excellent example of why ther eare increased calls for transparency at all levels of involvement see blue charities posts.

http://blog.through-the-gaps.co.uk/2012/11/blue-charity-business.html

http://blog.through-the-gaps.co.uk/2012/11/blue-charity-dutch-response.html

Fishing vessel overdue off Devon coast tonight

Sadly, the latest news is a body has been recovered.

Torquay lifeboat and others are searching for a missing fishing vessel that has not returned to port.

ITN latest news at 02100:


Brixham Coastguard is still coordinating the search for the 19ft fishing boat 'J.C.K.'. It was due back at around 7pm and was last seen passing Thatcher Rock at approximately 6.25pm. The following units are currently involved in the search; Torbay and Berry Head Coastguard Rescue Teams, Torbay RNLI all weather and inshore lifeboats, Exmouth and Teignmouth RNLI lifeboats, and the Coastguard search and rescue helicopter's from Portland and RNAS Culdrose. There are another three vessels in the area also helping. The weather conditions this evening have been gale force, south westerly winds 24 mph gusting 58 mph. 

 We are currently carrying out an extensive land, air and sea search. We are doing everything we can to locate 'J.C.K.', which has one person on board. 

 – PETER DAVIES, RESCUE CENTRE MANAGER AT BRIXHAM COASTGUARD

Bad weather? - even the Spaniards are dodging!!

Niall Duffy ‏@WestCorkPhoto

@power633 @Ajax_Hake You know its bad outside when the Spannies are dodging for cover behind Bere Island

View Bere Island off Castletown in a larger map

The above tweet only just hints at just the sea conditions in the South Western Approaches and the West coast of Ireland over the last twenty four hours...

Here, the weather conditions at buoy 62107, the Sevenstones Lightship off Land's End - the wave heights are in feet...

or the K1 buoy well south west of Ireland and Cornwall...

while at Rockall the pressure and wave height have dropped rapidly to a mere 26 feet!...

further south and way west of Ireland on the treacherous Porcupine Bank the wave height topped an incredible 45 feet earlier today - and the wind has barely exceeded 50 knots!...

This video was shot some years ago aboard a Spanish long liner working at Rockall - and shows the FV MAR AZUL call sign MQSL8 filmed from FV TROITA call sign MQSR8 in very rough seas - the conditions are extreme and are probably a match for the wave heights currently being recorded around the western coasts of the UK and Ireland! Undoubtedly, there area number of these vessels working on the Rockall and Porcupine Banks as you read this!

Boys making bubbles at the car wash!

Saturday saw Penlee lifeboat crew's 2013 SOS day arrived and was spent with Patch and the crew making huge amounts of suds and bubbles around a steady stream of grubby cars and vans!