News from France: Large retailers renew their support for the fishing industry

On Wednesday, March 1st, at the Salon de l'Agriculture in Paris, the retail sector signed a new financing agreement for the French Fishing Industry (FFP). It is committed to €68.2 million for four years. Reduced resources, but with the Pavillon France brand now well established, the association will focus more on production.

Les signataires - Aldi, Auchan, Carrefour, groupe Casino, Cora, Franprix, Intermarché, Leader Price, Leclerc, Lidl, Match, Monoprix, Système U – participent au budget à proportion de leurs parts de marché. (Photo : Solène Le Roux)

The executives of the mass distribution have come to show their renewed commitment in FFP, but also to testify their satisfaction with the actions carried out during the first period, 2012-2016. FFP had at this start a substantial budget of 31 million euros per year, which enabled it, for one third of the budget, to create and implement the Pavillon France brand. It is now "recognized by 56% of consumers," says Gérard Higuinen, president of FFP, and presents "about 10% about" on tide shelves, tell the distributors.

Two-thirds of the budget was channeled upstream. The association has thus enabled a vast plan to modernize fishing vessels, infusing 75 million euros in investments improving working conditions on board, energy consumption, selectivity and quality. This has benefited 2,400 ships, about 60% of the metropolitan fleet. Lastly, it has supported more than 70 scientific projects for 18 million euros, for, among other things, a better knowledge of the resource.

For the new period, financing decreases by €18.6 million per year for the first two years and then by €15.5 million for 2019 and 2020. A decrease was expected, Negotiations. Support is reduced by about 1% of turnover, to 0.5% at the end of the period. But promoting the brand will require less effort than it took to implement it. And the Feamp takes over on some grants.

The actions are thus redirected, with fewer credits devoted to promotion; Maintaining the scale of support for research; And an evolution in the accompaniment of production. Assistance to fleet modernization is only maintained in 2017 (notice to interested parties), but the boost to the construction launched in 2016 should be renewed.

More generally, actions should focus on the installation, transmission, renewal of the fleet and of men. With a training effort going from fishers to fishmongers, because it is the whole industry that has trouble recruiting.

Original text here courtesy of Le Marin:

Fish-free #FishyFriday - almost!

With gales sweeping across the south west earlier in the week there was not a single box of fish on the market floor this morning...

save for two dozen boxes of handline mackerel that were held in the fridge overnight...

which were swiftly whisked across the market floor on their way up the line...

most of the netting fleet sailed yesterday and will make their first landings early next week...

the lights might be on but there is no one aboard the Admiral Gordon up on the slip.

Remote Electronic Monitoring. "It is difficult to manage anything if you don’t measure it."

Once upon a time fishermen were, in the main, reluctant to tell anyone what, how much and where they caught their fish. Some fishermen used their memory or kept simple fishing logs, some with more detail with entries including weather conditions and technical details of gear used. There was always a sense that knowledge is power and that meant the power to control rather than be in control. But now, times have changed and that information is now required by organisations like the MMO almost in real time for almost all the fleet.  Fishermen can now use the data they provide along with all the other data to help manage fisheries - especially when they need to argue that there is an abundance of fish where before there was though not to be - as in the case of haddock in ICES Area VII.

What Remote Electronic Monitoring (REM) means: "It is difficult to manage anything if you don’t measure it." 

REM is gateway to sustainable fishing: Correct data for science, free choice of fishing method and selective fishing, no externality costs and reasured consumers. As of now Article 15 of the reformed Common Fisheries Policy prescribing all catches to be counted, landed and documented is not being enforced and we risk to lose all benefits.

FISHERIES COMMITTEE’S BREXIT POSITION

The Conservative Fisheries Spokesman in the European Parliament, Ian Duncan, has described the approach of the Parliament’s Fisheries Committee to Brexit as fundamentally flawed.

The Conservative Fisheries Spokesman in the European Parliament, Ian Duncan, has described the approach of the Parliament’s Fisheries Committee to Brexit as fundamentally flawed.

In a meeting yesterday, members of the Fisheries Committee argued any future trade deal between the EU and the UK must guarantee EU access to British fishing waters.  No trade deal brokered by the EU has included access to the fishing grounds of the other nation as a requirement. The Fisheries Committee have now put forward text making this a requirement.

In a letter to the Chair of the Fisheries Committee, Alain Cadec, Ian said: ‘I appreciate the urgency with which EU fishing nations need to address this matter. With certain EU fishing vessels catching upwards of 60% of their catch in UK waters, it is clear that there will be a significant adjustment in EU fishing operations. However, as with Norway and Iceland, access to UK waters can be facilitated through negotiations similar to those currently conducted between the EU and the northern nations. To begin the negotiations in such an unbalanced manner, puts at risk the very issue we both care deeply about.’

Ian said: ‘The Committee’s demand that single market access for UK fish products should be dependent on free access to UK territorial waters for EU boats is a nonsense. It is important to remember that the European Parliament will not negotiate Brexit and this kind of intervention is unhelpful. As we approach the negotiations, I will continue to fight for the best possible deal for Scottish fishermen.

Reference Points For Europe’s Fish Stocks & DiscardLess newsletter

Fisheries management in the European Union entered a new era in 2014 when the reformed Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) went into force.

The CFP stipulates an end to overfishing in EU waters with the goal of restoring fish stocks to productive levels. To ensure effective and legally robust decision-making under the CFP, the framework for advice on fishing limits must reflect the newly agreed-upon requirements. This will benefit the marine environment and bolster the fishing sector’s economic viability.

EU framework for advice on fishing limits

Under the CFP, the European Commission requests scientific advice on fishing limits from the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES). Today, these requests are based on parameters established under the previous CFP. Those parameters were intended to serve as safety margins to ensure that reproduction of stocks was not impaired. The reformed CFP, however, stipulates a positive vision for the future, meaning that more ambitious parameters, or reference points, must be used to achieve the CFP’s objectives.


A timely publication on the back of this paper comes from the DiscardLess group:

The DiscardLess consortium have just published their third newsletter - who are they? See here:

Lates news on 'big movers' like hake - ICES WKFISHDISH REPORT 2016

Here is the executive summary form the ICES WKFISHDISH REPORT 2016 

This report documents the work undertaken during the WKFISHDISH workshop
which took place at ICES headquarters (Copenhagen) on November 22nd 25th 2016. The purpose of this workshop was to inform an answer to a request from the EU Commission about the distribution shifts of commercial fish stocks in relation to TAC management areas which ICES tackled in two consecutive steps: 

(1) data analysis carried out by the ICES secretariat (2) identify, based on both the results from the analysis and existing literature, changes in distribution and the associated drivers. 

This second step was done by the WKFISHDISH workshop participants. The workshop was chaired by Thomas Brunel (Netherlands), Alan Baudron (UK) and Jose Fernandes (UK).

The WKFISHDISH workshop was articulated around three terms of reference: (ToR1) consider the findings of the analyses carried out by the ICES secretariat to identify distribution changes, (ToR2) where shifts in distribution were identified, literature was used to identify likely drivers, (ToR3) implications of the distribution shifts and the likelihood of further change were discussed. 19 species were considered: anchovy, anglerfish (2 species), blue whiting, cod, common sole, Greenland halibut, haddock, hake, herring, horse mackerel, mackerel, megrims (2 species), Norway pout, plaice, Pollack, saithe, sprat, spurdog and whiting. The ICES secretariat analysed available bottom trawl surveys data for these species (bar Greenland halibut for which no data was available, only existing literature was used for this stock) and produced the following outputs for each species: (i) presence/absence maps, (ii) trends in probability of occurrence within each ICES areas, (iii) centre of gravity with associated latitude and longitude trends within each ICES areas, (iv) significant differences in relative changes in abundance between adjacent ICES areas.

These outputs were analysed by WKFISHDISH workshop participants to answers
ToR1. To be consistent, during the literature review needed to address ToR2 efforts were made to assess the following potential drivers for each stock: 

(i) geographical attachment, (ii) environmental conditions, (iii) density-dependent habitat selection, (iv) spatial dependency, (v) demographic structure, (vi) species interaction, (vii) memory, (viii) other drivers such as fishing. 

‘Big movers’ species (i.e. species exhibiting distribution changes likely to be problematic regarding TAC management areas)
were identified as such if they conformed to at least one of the following two criteria: 

(1) a large, continuous and directional change in distribution was identified from the analyses and/or in the literature review, (2) a change in distribution resulting in subsequent changes in the relative distribution across TAC management areas was observed.

Based on the analyses and the literature available, all species were found to exhibit some changes in their distribution to some extent apart from Greenland halibut, Norway pout and spurdog for which no evidence was found. For these 18 ‘movers’ species, the main drivers distribution identified were environmental conditions (mainly temperature) for all species, followed by density-dependent habitat selection (7 species), geographical attachment (6 species), species interactions (4 species), demographic structure (3 species), and spatial dependency (2 species). Other possible drivers (fishing and colonisation) were also mentioned for 4 species. The following species were identified as ‘big movers’: anchovy (northward shift in the North Sea), anglerfish (regional changes in the North Sea), blue whiting (increase in the North Sea and west of Scotland), cod (northward shift), hake (expansion in the 2 | ICES WKFISHDISH REPORT 2016

North Sea), herring (changes across different TAC management areas), mackerel (major changes across northeast Atlantic), megrims (regional changes in the North Sea, Bay of Biscay and Celtic Sea), and plaice (increase in North Sea and Baltic Sea, changes across different TAC management areas). Despite showing clear changes in distribution, horse mackerel was not included in this list as current management measures already account for these distribution changes.

Both ecological and management implications of the changes in distribution were identified in ToR3. The main possible ecological implications include limited areas of suitable habitats (cod, sole and plaice), isolation between life stages habitats (herring), and new prey-predator interactions and subsequent competition between predators (hake and saithe). The main management implication identified is the mismatch between regional abundances and TACs allocation, with hake and mackerel being the two obvious examples. This mismatch, in combination with the landing obligation, could result in choke species issues and challenges the relative stability currently used to distribute quotas.

Regarding the likelihood of further changes in distribution, current climate scenarios project an increase in temperature and decrease on primary production and it is likely that future changes in distribution will occur. Based on the available information the following areas were identified most at risk: North Sea (warming and latitudinal shift), southern areas i.e. Celtic Sea and below (warming and lower primary production), west of Scotland (northward shift), Norwegian Sea and Skaggerak and Kattegat (increase in abundance). However, our ability to accurately predict the future distribution of fish species is hampered by both our understanding of the mechanism associated
with drivers, and our ability to predict these drivers.

In conclusion, the ‘big movers’ species identified here (i.e. anchovy, anglerfish, blue whiting, cod, hake, herring, mackerel, megrims, plaice) are most at risk of resulting in management issues. While there is no obvious solution to address this management problem, some form of adaptive management seems the best candidate to deal with changes in fish distribution. In addition, a better monitoring of fish stocks and ecosystems is needed to improve our knowledge of the processes at play in order to increase our ability to predict future changes and foresee potential ecological and management
issues.

Keep an eye on the forecast with WindyTV

These days the chances of another Micheal Fish gaff are few and far between. Forecasting technology has come a long way since 1987 - though if you ask French fishermen they will tell you their shipping forecast (which took its data from Bracknell) was dishing out hurricane force winds to French fishermen that day - several of our boats were still at sea fishing around midnight on the Friday night when they were passed by French trawlers heading for the safety of Newlyn!

You can bookmark the Through the Gaps has a weather page which is dedicated to providing a range of live forecasting tools - Windytv being the newsest and easiest to use - just click anywhere on the chart to get basic wind info - or adjust the timeline at the bottom of the graphic to look up to three days ahead!