#FishyFriday feels the full force of Abi'gale'.

French trawler Cezembre briefly stops in Newlyn...

but was soon underway again...

just ahead of the beam trawler Algrie blown in through the gaps for weather...

almost in time to make a very quiet #FishyFriday market this morning

with more boxes of crab bait than anything else...

though these rare mackerel made good money...

as did the rest of the white fish...

like these colourful plaice...

all keeping the buyers busy...

catamaran workboats have made a huge difference to the working deck area in comparison to the overall length and size of vessels...

the MTS Valour being a good example...

the collective noun is possibly a bevvy of beamers...

to go or not to go...

today Tom watches over heavy seas in the Bay some 18 years after the Margaretha Maria  was lost with all hands south of the Lizard sometime between the 11th and 18th of November in 1997. RIP Vince, Robbie, Peter and Kerry.

Algrie to the market - berthing masterclass.

The gentle art of maneuvering 200 tons of steel using ahead and astern and the momentum of the boat to bring her alongside in a gale of wind.

Latest news on Atlantic and North Sea fish quotas in 2016

Questions and Answers on the Commission's proposal for Atlantic and North Sea fish quotas in 2016

The European Commission proposes fishing opportunities (Total Allowable Catches) for 2016 for the Atlantic and the North Sea.

1) What's new in 2016?

From 1 January 2016 fishermen will be obliged to land all catches of certain demersal species once they have been caught. This applies for example to hake, whiting and sole in certain fisheries. To compensate the industry for the extra effort involved in landing these catches, the Commission will propose so-called "TAC top-ups" for fish stocks that fall under the landing obligation. These TAC top-ups will be calculated based on how much those fleets that come under the landing obligation in 2016 contribute to total catches and discards.

2) Why are the TAC top-ups not yet included in the Commission proposal?

The Commission has asked scientific advisory body STECF for advice on the appropriate level of TAC top-up. STECF will only provide their advice in mid-November. Therefore, the stocks for which TAC top-ups are proposed are kept open in today's proposal. The Commission will table a non-paper with all the TAC top-ups as soon as possible after receiving the STECF advice.

3) How many TACs will be in line with MSY next year?

This will depend on the decision taken by the Council in December. In December 2014 the EU increased the number of MSY TACs from 27 to 36 in one go. The Commission is again proposing to reach maximum sustainable yield (MSY) exploitation rates by 2016 for all stocks where scientists have given MSY advice, except for sea bass. For sea bass the situation differs in that there were no catch limits in place on EU level before 2015. The Commission is therefore proposing to achieve MSY in 2017, still well in advance of 2020. Proposing TAC at MSY levels means phasing out overfishing: the MSY rate is the amount of fishing that will deliver the highest long-term catch from a stock, so any fishing above that level is wasteful, harmful and ultimately unprofitable for the fishermen.

4) Why are there so many figures missing in the proposal?

The Commission negotiates on behalf of the EU a number of quotas for fish stocks shared with third countries (Norway, Faroe Islands, Greenland, Iceland, Russia). The same is the case for the stocks in international waters and for highly migratory species such as tuna, where the European Commission negotiates fishing opportunities in regional fisheries management organisations. The figures will be filled in as soon as these negotiations are concluded. In addition, for some stocks advice was received too late to include figures in the proposal. 

5) What is the monetary value of the 2016 proposal compared to this year's quotas?

For many TACs the proposal contains no figure yet. For those TACs where a figure is included, the monetary value was approximately 1,123,000,000 EUR in the 2015 Regulation, and is about 25m EUR less in today's proposal.

At this stage, however, comparing monetary value is rather meaningless: several high value or high volume TACs (e.g. some nephrops, sole and horse mackerel TACs) are still open in the proposal. 

6) How many TACs are there in the Atlantic and North Sea?

The main group of TACs proposed is included in Annex IA. This annex contains 153 TACs in the Atlantic and North Sea, 63 of which are being proposed today. In today's proposal:

• 11 take consideration of MSY advice,
• 3 TACs (Celtic Sea herring, cod in the Irish Sea and cod in West of Scotland) are in line with long-term management strategies, e.g. management plans stemming from specific CFP regulations in force, Commission proposals for management plans not yet adopted, or a management approach put forward by Advisory Councils (ACs) and found precautionary by scientific advisory bodies.
• 49 TACs concern so-called data-limited stocks. This means that scientists cannot make a full assessment. Of these 49 TACs, the Commission is proposing to keep 26 TACs at the same level as in 2015, following an agreement with the Council to keep them stable unless scientific advice shows that the stock is deteriorating. Most of these stocks are by-catches in mixed fisheries and the TACs are rather small.
• The remaining TACs are in “pm” (pro memoria), either because scientific advice is not yet available, because further analysis of the advice is necessary or because international negotiations should be concluded later in the year. For these stocks, the proposal will need to be updated when the related information becomes available.

The TACs in today's proposal include 4 increases, 5 TACs which are proposed at the same level as in 2015 ("rollover") (plus 26 "rollovers" in for stocks contained in a joint Council and Commission statement) and 28 decreases. All four TAC increases concern stocks fished at MSY levels:

Common name	TAC Unit	final TAC in 2015	Type	TAC 2016 (Proposal)	TAC change: 2015 - 2016 (Proposal)
Megrims	North Sea (Union waters of IIa and IV)	2083	MSY	2639	26.7%
Megrims	West of Scotland (Union and international waters of Vb; VI)	4129	MSY	4314	4.5%
Horse Mackerel	North and North West of Spain (VIIIc)	13572	MSY	17235	27.0%
Horse Mackerel	Portuguese waters (IX)	59500	MSY	68583	15.3%

7) What about sea bass?

Sea bass is a special case: real management measures for sea bass were only put in place in January 2015 and catch limits were only put in place in June 2015. The Commission is therefore building on the measures taken in 2015 to halt the dramatic decline in this important stock. Today's proposal includes a complete fishing ban for commercial vessels and recreational anglers in the first half of 2016. For the second half of 2016, the Commission is proposing a monthly one tonne catch limit for vessels targeting sea bass, and a one fish bag limit for recreational anglers. It is also proposing to maintain the closure for commercial fishing around Ireland.

Brussels, 10 November 2015

For more information:

Press Release on Commission's proposal on fishing opportunities in the Atlantic and North Sea for 2016: http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-15-6016_en.htm

Questions and Answers on Quota Top-ups: http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_MEMO-15-6017_en.htm

Slavery? Poor working conditions? Results of the straw poll on fishing boat working hours.

Catching a few zeds before hauling again.

After this was a quote used by the Guardian newspaper in a year-long investigation to illustrate what appeared to be horrendous working conditions aboard Irish fishing vessels a straw poll was conducted on Through the Gaps...

The survey was live for seven days.

Full-time fishermen were asked if they had ever worked more than 48 hours without sleep - even if this is not the norm, the percentage of fishermen who have worked for periods of over 48 hours without sleep would still appear to be significant with more than 50% having done so more than a few times - that's fishing -jet lag ;-)sometimes you just have to get the job done.

Margiris battles it out with Abigail she's the first of a kind.

As the Met Office starts a new trend in weather forecasting by naming the storms - with girls names - the first is Abigail who is sweeping her way in from across the North Atlantic...

as Margiris, the world's second largest trawler fishes on despite the storm Abigail hitting the north west coast of the UK...

she is one of three boats currently undertaking research using giant mid-water trawls fitted with separator panels to reduce by-catches. She is of course no stranger to the use of such devices.

We are guessing the next storm will be Barbara or Bettie or Brittany or Belinda or.....if 2013/14 was anything to go by the Met Office will be looking at girls' names beginning with Z quick enough.

Europeche accuses Pew of defending the ideas of "false and contrary" to the weight and impact science discussion forums, advisory councils and ideas.

As fishermen provide more and more data and reap the benefits of their efforts to curb by-catches and fish more sustainably through technical methods so the big NGOs will respond in ever more aggressive ways as the evidence begins to undermine their attempts to indirectly and directly influence legislators - in this instance they have upset Europeche who have accused the Pew Foundation (an American charity like the Oak Foundation which sees fit to fund many anti-fishing activities here in Europe - High Fearnley-Whittingstall's infamous FishFight being one to the tune of -


"What the industry does not need is the continuing harassment by environmental extremists backed by substantial sums of money from charitable groups such as the Oak Foundation in the Fish Fight campaign. That Foundation funded Keo Films to the tune of almost $500k. HFW is a Director and presenter of the company which has produced his and Professor Callum Roberts latest unbalanced assault on the industry."  Courtesy of FAL


It is a measure of just what small-scale fishermen throughout the UK and beyond are up against - surely a case of David and Goliath to the power of ten. Below, is a little background on the growth of pressure on the European fishing industry funded largely by giant American charities that have pumped well over £75,000,000 into NGOs like Greenpeace and the WWF in Europe. 

However, the position of the European fishing industry on the CFP reform was far from unified, in fact, one cannot speak of “the European fishing industry” in the first place, as huge differences exist within the national organizations represented in Europêche, not to speak of those parts of the fishing sector which are hardly represented at all.

The latter is for example the case for large parts of small-scale fisheries in Portugal. Hence, internal rifts appeared from the beginning: while Spanish and Scottish fishing organizations harshly criticized the reform proposal, the Danish Fishermen’s Association stated that “Danish fisheries are economically viable” and “already geared towards the changes the European Commission envisages” (CFP Reform Watch 2011).

With the fishing sector divided and national industry corporations disagreeing about their position towards the CFP reform, it became increasingly difficult to lobby decision-makers with clear and coherent messages. In fact, statements of Europêche, for example, were relatively scarce – at least compared to statements from environmental groups, which soon dominated the stake-holder discourse on the CFP reform. Moreover, the sector appears to have grossly underestimated the rise in political authority of the EP and its effects. While the fishing sectors maintained its lobbying focus on the Council and individual governments, they neglected the EP. Even liberal and conservative MEPs from traditional fishing countries mentioned the peculiar absence of industry lobbying .

In contrast, environmental NGOs were extremely active in monitoring and lobbying the Parliament. In 2009, a group of NGO representatives already active in European Fisheries met to form an alliance to pressure for a more sustainable CFP. The resulting NGO coalition Oceana2012 was initiated by the US-based charity foundation PEW, which had just opened office in Brussels, and four other environmental NGOs (interview 5). The overall aim of the 14 Performing ‘Green Europe’campaign was to focus on over-fishing. The NGO coalition grew to 50 members by the end of the year 2009, and when the Ocean2012 campaign ended with the finalization of the CFP reform in early 2014, it consisted of 193 environmental groups.

The members of Ocean2012 decided to present themselves as a united front vis-à-vis MEPs, Commission and Council. Hence, they always approached decision-makers as a group of several NGOs under the heading of Ocean2012. With the publication of the Commission proposals, they started an intensive lobbying campaign that focused on the EP in particular (interview 5). They organized hearings, at times together with MEPs, circulated policy and opinion papers, wrote open letters to the Parliament at large as well as to individual members, and staged dramatic performances in front of the EU institutions to draw media attention. Before committee and plenary votes, Ocean2012 bombarded MEPs with emails detailing the NGO positions as well as with individual letters from the MEPs’ constituencies. Reportedly, PEW also financed similar campaigns on the national level, targeting national audiences in selected Member States.

Contemporaneously and independently from the Ocean2012 initiative, a chef from the UK, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, launched his own campaign to end discards in 2010, Hugh’s Fish Fight. Fearnley-Whittingstall is a celebrity chef and broadcaster in the UK, who runs his own cooking program on a major private TV channel. His campaign against the practice of discarding edible fish at sea soon attracted media attention throughout the UK, and he created an online petition collecting more than 870,000 supporters from 195 countries. His campaign is credited with raising awareness of the discards problem and pushing the UK government in particular to take a more active stance against over-fishing by several interviewees.

Interviewees also noted that MEPs in the Fisheries Committee from the UK had to take the campaign into account, as they found themselves suddenly under the scrutiny of the public and media in their constituencies. Moreover, the Fish Fight campaign soon diffused across Europe, spawning similar initiatives in Germany, France, the Netherlands, Spain and several other European countries.
Both campaigns succeeded in attracting media interest and public awareness at unprecedented levels when it comes to EU fisheries, which continued to have a rather boring and technical image among journalists.

With all big players of the environmental and fisheries scene represented in Brussels (WWF, Greenpeace, PEW, Oceana) on board, and with the media support of Hugh’s Fish Fight, the NGO campaign increasingly gained momentum. As some of the key activists of the campaign told us in our interviews, the resulting politicization of the fisheries policy and growing public attention helped convince MEPs, who were otherwise not particularly interested in the CFP reform .

Now, however, it became possible for those MEPs to gain the moral high ground and ‘vote green’ for a celebrated cause, without fearing any real damages, except perhaps for a minority of MEPs from fishing countries, who may have supported weaker regulations in fisheries otherwise." 

Performing ‘Green Europe’?

 A narrative analysis of European Fisheries Policy 

Europeche summarized in an open letter to the NGO Pew Charity Trust the feelings of the sector to the organization after the publication last March, the report "Changing Course: end overfishing in North Western Europe." The document denounced the "dramatic" expansion of fisheries in northwestern Europe in recent decades, due to foraging and benefits; He denounced the warnings of scientists and NGOs to end this situation had been ignored; He pointed to the situation of overfishing in the area; and it placed the PPC as a tool to restore populations. In his letter, Europeche harshly criticizes the organization for these claims, which are "false and contrary to scientific opinion," in his opinion.

The letter of the sector begins by recalling the words of Eskild Kirkegaard, Chairman of the ICES advisory committee on the recent seminar on stocks held in Brussels. At the meeting, according Europeche, the scientist stressed the overall decline it had experienced fishing mortality in the last 15 years both in the northeast Atlantic and the Baltic. The forum highlighted how the measures taken had been successful and that "increasing trends in population sizes of most of the stocks of commercial importance" were observed. He also stressed the progress achieved in the MSY target of "majority" of the population.

On this basis, the letter, signed by the president of Europeche, Javier Garat- considered "false and misleading" statements contained in this document. "The reasons remain unclear, it is not a matter of misinterpretation of data. These statements are clearly part of a coherent organized campaign to influence legislators "Garat criticism in hard writing. Europeche president believes that "it is increasingly difficult to accept that Pew acting in good faith and deliberately misleading when it publishes reports like this."

Europeche emphasizes the "legitimate and important" role played by NGOs. Its activity "is healthy for industry managers when it comes to accountability for actions and practices." To Garat, the sector has "room for better", and NGOs could play an important role in this regard. However, Pew urges to "examine their own motives" and analyze "what is achieved by publication of these deliberately misleading statements." Further it considers that only get reports like this rigor subtract the organization against "serious and rational" NGO, which results in a lower weight and impact in the discussion forums, such as advisory councils.

Translation of the original story in French courtesy of Google.

Praise for Skipper Expo Int. Bournemouth 2014

Exhibitors at Skipper Expo Int. Bournemouth 2014 have praised the show for the excellent quality of the visitors and the brisk business enjoyed on the stands. Sponsored by the National Federation of Fishermen’s Organisations, and held at the Bournemouth International Centre on 10 and 11 October, the superb facilities in the exhibition hall were praised by both exhibitors and visitors alike. A major attraction was the five fishing vessels on display that were able to be accommodated within the hall.