Catálogo de publicaciones - libros

Fisheries regulations aim to maintain fishing mortality and fishing impacts within sustainable limits. Although sustainability is in the long-term interest of fishers, the regulations themselves are usually not in the short-term interest of the individual fisher because they restrict the fisher’s economic activity. Therefore, as is the case with all regulations, the temptation exists for non-compliance and dishonest reporting. In the EU and elsewhere, top-down, complex regulations, often leading to unintended consequences, with complex and non-transparent governance-science interactions, may decrease the credibility and legitimacy of fisheries management among fishers. This, in turn, may decrease the motivation to comply and report honestly. The Landing Obligation may make things worse because following the regulation to the letter would often strongly and negatively impact the individual fishers’ economic situation. Behavioural science suggests factors that may influence compliance and honesty. Compliance is not necessarily a function of the economic benefits and costs of rule violation: compliance may be more or less, depending on intrinsic motivations. An increased level of self-decision may lead to greater buy-in to sustainable fishing practices and voluntary compliance to catch limits and the Landing Obligation. All else being equal, people in small and self-selected groups are inherently more likely to behave “prosocially”. In this chapter, some key recommendations based on behavioural science are given for changes in institutional settings that may increase voluntary compliance and sustainable fishing practices. However, transition to a system allowing for more freedom from top-down regulation, with more self-governance, may be difficult due to institutional and cultural barriers and therefore may take many years.

A sensible approach to minimize discards is to avoid areas or seasons where unwanted catch may be present. The implementation of a Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) approach to discard management requires the understanding of marine biological processes, as well as fishing conditions at a defined spatial scale. Mathematical models that analyze the spatio-temporal conditions of selected fishing areas allow the definition of different scenarios where discards are minimized by avoiding fishing for unwanted species and/or illegal specimens. Here we show some examples of how particular spatial models can be used for advice on MSP for discards. We introduce a geoserver GIS platform developed to produce maps of discard probability by using a Fishing Suitable Index. We also give an example of simulating virtual fishing closures. The inclusion of a Marine Spatial Planning approach to implement the Landing Obligation will bring some new challenges and opportunities. Finally, we will discuss and suggest some recommendations for its effective and successful implementation.

Under the Landing Obligation (LO) fishers will need to reduce or land fish that were previously discarded. In this chapter we look at how they might be able to do that by summarising a number of studies conducted in various European regions. We start by describing a series of “challenge” trials where fishers tried to reduce their discards by whatever (legal) means they thought best. In some cases, they were able to reduce unwanted catches, in others they were less successful. We also interviewed fishers not involved in the trials to ask them what they thought they could do. We explore their approaches which generally fell into three categories: more selective gear; tactical and strategic changes; and management changes. Scientific data (surveys, landings, and observers data) can also be valuable to help fishers to decide where and when to fish to best avoid unwanted catches and maximise opportunities to catch their quotas. We provide some examples of this type of approach, and also how these can be adapted for use as interactive online apps that fishers can use in planning or whilst at sea.

To address the challenges of the Landing Obligation, fishers need to be able to adjust the selective performance of each fishing operation in response to what they observe on the fishing grounds and to what they bring on board. This will include strategies on where and when to fish but also on how to fish, which we examine here. In particular, we focus on ways to encourage and support fishers to design, develop and test selective gears that will avoid unwanted catches in the first place. To this end, we highlight the necessity to increase awareness of existing solutions, the importance of understanding the capture process and how fish react to fishing gears, and the need to evaluate the economic implications of new gears. We examine the success of science-industry collaborations and emphasise the benefits of a flexible regulatory environment. Looking ahead, the fishing industry needs to keep up-to-date with new technologies that can be used to observe the interaction of fish and their gears and with new approaches to modifying selectivity.

The release of unwanted catches (UWC) from purse seines, while the catch is still in the water, is known as “slipping”. Once thought to be a benign process, compared to discarding UWC overboard from the fishing vessel, it is now recognised that “slipping” can lead to significant mortality in the released fish if done inappropriately. In this chapter, we examine purse seining and slipping operations, and discuss what drives slipping and potential mitigation measures to reduce slipping mortality. We use three examples of purse seine fisheries for small pelagic species in the North-east Atlantic; from Norway, Portugal and Spain. The ideal solution (identifying and avoiding UWC before the net is set) requires the development of tools to enable fishers to better characterise target schools in terms of key selection criteria, e.g., with respect to species, individual size and catch biomass. Such tools are being developed, based primarily on hydro-acoustic technology. However, some UWC in purse seine catches are inevitable, and operational improvements in slipping practices have been shown to significantly reduce stress and mortality in the released UWC. We conclude with a discussion on the challenges currently facing the implementation of the European Union (EU) Landing Obligation with regards to minimising slipping related mortality.

The purpose of this chapter is to discuss challenges that the EU Landing Obligation presents to the onboard handling of unwanted catches and how vessel layout modifications can be applied to meet these challenges. The key challenge the industry is facing is having to bring ashore catches of little or no value, which requires significant effort to handle and takes up valuable space that is, in many cases, not available. Considering that 85% of EU fishing vessels are under 12 metres long and 97% are under 24 metres, it is evident that the majority of the EU fleet has limited options when it comes to handling and stowage of catches that would have been discarded prior to the implementation of the Landing Obligation. The Landing Obligation only applies to species subject to catch limits, which means that the current set-up on vessels can, for the most part, accommodate the fish of legal size that needs to be landed. The main challenge is catches of undersized fish that are not permitted to be used for direct human consumption. For those catches, the simplest approach is to handle them as targeted catch, which will allow them to be used for higher-value products such as pet food, pharmaceuticals, food supplements, etc. This is, however, not applicable for the majority of the fleet, due to a lack of space and the labour effort required. Solutions such as bulk storage and simple silage preservation are alternatives that are being explored for smaller vessels. The larger vessels have more options, such as full silage production, fish protein hydrolysate and fish meal production.

The European Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) has established a landing obligation (LO) and the need for proper management of bycatches without incentivising their capture. Food use is the priority option but only unwanted catches (UWC) above minimum conservation reference size (MCRS) can be used for direct human consumption. As a result, other options, such as animal feeds, industrial uses or energy, should be considered to valorise landed < MCRS individuals. Two approaches have been developed to help select the best available option for processing UWC. The first methodology is based on a multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) using an analytic hierarchy process (AHP) that considers technical, economic and market criteria. As a sample case, we chose the Basque fleet fishing in the Bay of Biscay, developed within the H2020 DiscardLess project. The second approach is based on the simultaneous analysis of both economic and environmental aspects. This was applied to the case of Spanish bottom trawlers operating in ICES sub-Divisions VIIIc and IXa. Finally, various food products and bio compounds from typical UWC biomass were obtained in a pilot food processing plant developed within the LIFE iSEAS project.

A key requirement for the successful implementation of the Landing Obligation is the need to monitor and regulate unwanted catches at sea. This issue is particularly challenging because of the large number of vessels and trips that need to be monitored and the remoteness of vessels at sea. Several options exist in theory, ranging from patrol vessels to onboard observers and self-sampling. Increasingly though, technology is developing to provide remote Electronic Monitoring (EM) with cameras at lower costs. This chapter first provides an overall synthesis of the pro’s and con’s of several monitoring tools and technologies. Four EM technologies already trialled in EU fisheries are then summarised. We conclude that it is now possible to conduct reliable and cost-effective monitoring of unwanted catches at sea, especially if various options are used in combination. However, effective monitoring is a necessary condition for the successful implementation of the Landing Obligation but insufficient unless it is implemented with a high level of coverage and with the support of the fishing industry.

The collection of catch composition data during inspections at sea by EU Member States occurs under the framework of joint deployment plans (JDP). It is known as “the last haul” (LH) programme and has been a fundamental tool in allowing the estimation of discards and the derivation of indicators of compliance with the landing obligation (LO). During sea inspections, measures of quantities of fish below and above the minimum conservation reference size and grade categories of the legal-size catch are used to derive estimates of discards. The methods to estimate discards assume that the relative catch composition (discard ratios) obtained with the data collected during LH inspections reflects the true catch composition of the fleet segment operating with the same gear and mesh size and in that area. The comparison between these discard ratios and with what is reported in fishers’ logbook is then used to estimate the discard component. The background of the LH programme, the methodologies for deriving discard ratios using LH data and the statistical analysis of the data are explained in this chapter.

While genetics has assisted fisheries management for over 50 years, genetic applications aiming to alleviate or eliminate discards have received little attention. In this chapter, we focus on how genetics can be applied under the EU Landing Obligation, to identify and prevent unwanted catches and to estimate the composition of products made from such catches. Three themes are covered: (i) the genetic identification of bycatch; (ii) the genetic analysis of species composition in nutritional products made from unwanted fish; (iii) the potential of using so-called environmental DNA (DNA shedded from aquatic organisms into the water) to reduce bycatch. For all themes, we introduce and explain the relevant genetic techniques, including data formats and analyses. We present the most significant limitations of the methodologies for their implementation in fisheries and provide examples of their use through relevant case studies. Finally, we discuss the potential future perspectives, with emphasis on the rapid progress in portable and automatic DNA devices, which may revolutionize the use of real-time onsite genetic analyses.