Suchergebnisse

The European fisheries management is currently undergoing a fundamental change in the handling of catches of commercial fisheries with the implementation of the 2013 Common Fisheries Policy. One of the main objectives of the policy is to end the practice of discarding in the EU by 2019. However, for such changes to be successful, it is vital to ensure stakeholders acceptance, and it is prudent to consider possible means to verify compliance with the new regulation. Remote Electronic Monitoring (REM) with Closed-Circuit Television (CCTV) has been tested in a variety of fisheries worldwide for different purposes and is currently considered as one possible tool to ensure compliance with a European ban on discards. This study focuses on Danish fishery inspectors and on fishers with REM experience, whose opinions are less well known. Their views on the landing obligation and on the use of REM were investigated using interviews and questionnaires, and contrasted to some fishers without REM experience. 80% of fishery inspectors and 58% of REM-experienced fishers expressed positive views on REM. 9 out of 10 interviewed fishers without REM experience were against REM. Participation in a REM trial has not led to antipathy towards REM. Fishery inspectors saw on-board observers, at-sea control and REM as the three best solutions to control the landing obligation but shared the general belief that the landing obligation cannot be enforced properly and will be difficult for fishers to comply with. The strengths and weaknesses of REM in this context are discussed

Rigid fisheries management frameworks often leave fishers with limited possibilities and incentives to adjust the selectivity of their gears to the specific fishing conditions. Implementation of the landing obligation in European fisheries emphasizes fishers need to flexibility in which gear to use to be able to match the selectivity of the gear to the quota available. How fishers can play an important role in facilitating a more regionalised and flexible technical regulation by actively participating in the development of gears and contributing to the scientific documentation of their selectivity is discussed. Perspectives in the proposed technical regulation for EU fisheries and the regionalisation in the 2013 Common Fisheries Policy are discussed based on an analysis of the current EU technical regulation. Then is discussed a new pathway to address the problem, currently being trialled in Danish fisheries. Throughout the article, three themes are discussed: Identifying gear needs, development and testing of gear with fishers as central actors; how the selectivity of the gear should be documented; and opportunities for faster evaluation of new gear, following the regionalisation of the technical measure regulation. The paper concludes that a more flexible system of gear development and evaluation is possible by a) involvement of fishers in proposing gear adjustments, self-sampling and documenting results following scientific protocols and evaluation, testing a range of designs before scientific testing, and b) open for faster approval of gear use under a regionalised technical regulation regime with yearly adjustments of management plans containing the technical regulation.

The present report is an EU-FP7-SOCIOEC Report giving an overview and critical evaluation of the current management measures implemented for the North Sea mixed demersal fisheries and the fish stocks involved in this. Also, this involves review and critical evaluation of the scientific advice supporting the fisheries management for the North Sea mixed demersal fisheries and the stocks involved herein. Management of the demersal roundfish and flatfish fisheries in the North Sea is conducted mainly through the EU Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) and the yearly EU-Norway Bilateral Fishery Agreements. The prevailing management system and principle has been landing quotas (TAC, Total Allowable Catch) mainly based on the EU principle of relative stability in the international sharing of the TAC. Also, general effort limitations and technical measures are set for the EU and Norwegian fisheries on top of the TAC regulations. Technical measures have mainly aimed at reducing the retention and discard of the juveniles through gear measures and to protect the spawners and/or recruits in the fish populations through closures. Furthermore, the management is based on a set of national measures especially concerning control and enforcement measures, national distribution of the overall TAC, individual special technical measures, allocation (distribution) of national TACs to different fisheries and vessels including the share to e.g. Individual Transferable Quotas (ITQs) or Vessel Quota Shares (VQSs). The management of the North Sea demersal fisheries has changed quite a lot over the last decades following the need to rebuild the fish stocks, and in particular the North Sea cod stock in relation to the present case study. The CFP has increasing focus towards implementing multi-annual or long term management plans (MAMPs, LTMPs) partly to avoid the annual political battles over setting the TAC. There has furthermore been a trend during the last decade to move away from the Precautionary Approach and towards Maximum Sustainable Yield as the overarching management objective and Harvest Control Rules (HCRs) based on this. There have been introduced increasingly restrictive fisheries-based effort limitations with possibilities for exemption or for less drastic effort reductions provided that cod avoidance behavior can be demonstrated. Although the decision-makers under the CFP have had a reputation of consistently setting TACs way above the scientific advice, the development in recent years has been towards this gap being reduced. Management of the fisheries has undergone a number of structural and behavioral changes, and these have already yielded some positive results as the state of the demersal stocks in the North Sea have globally improved. The status of main demersal stocks has considerably improved over the last decade. Fishing mortality has globally decreased and biomass has increased, and most of the assessed demersal stocks are now within sustainable limits. Some issues remain with North Sea cod, for which recovery is slower. At present, cod is the limiting species for all the North Sea demersal fisheries. Over a time span from the 1960s landings of demersal stocks have declined with an accelerating decrease since the mid-1990s in line with the falling stock sizes and regulated reductions in total allowable catches (TACs). A clear decrease in the mean fishing mortality (F) is observed in the 2000-2010 period with current F values between Fmsy and Fpa, and the spawning stock biomass (SSB) has on average been above Bpa for the period 1983-2010 for the assessed stocks. The effort in the central North Sea and along the Norwegian waters has decreased as well as the number of operating fishing vessels (capacity). Overall, the nominal effort (kW-days) by European fleets using demersal trawl, seine, beam trawl and gillnet in the North Sea, Skagerrak and the Eastern Channel have been substantially reduced (-20% between 2003 and 2011). Since 2000, the total fish biomass for exploited stocks in the North Sea is about 4-5 million tonnes with an increasing trend in the most recent years. Despite the decrease of landings and fishing mortality in the last recent decade, the overall recruitment has shown a clear decreasing trend from 1985-2010. The recent increase in SSB during the last decase, which is likely due to lower landings and fishing mortality levels in the last 15 years, indicate inclinations of the North Sea ecosystem to recover. However, this has not converted in higher recruitment levels in the most recent years in which there may be a time delay. There is a clear trend that both the gross profit and the net profit has improved from 2008-2010 for the main fleets of the North Sea with the only exception of the Dutch beam trawlers 18-24m, for which the gross profit decreased by nearly 90%. The positive development in economic performance measures can be a result of the structural changes that have recently occurred in many fisheries. There are fewer vessels sharing the available resources (reduction in over-capacity). Especially, the movement towards right-based systems is expected to have had positive effects on reducing the over-capacity and improving the economic performance of many fleets. Historically, EU subsidies over the years have contributed to making the fleet more efficient, so the success of the CFP in the area of developing an efficient fleet has historically contributed to its failure in relation to conserve fish stocks, as overcapacity is consistently mentioned as one of the fundamental reasons for the conservation failure historically. Employment in fishing as a social indicator is shrinking, not least for the North Sea, and has been so for many years. There are multiple explanations for this: i) individual vessels are getting more efficient, ii) consolidation of fleets whereby fewer vessels catch the available resources with noticeable decrease in number of operating fishing vessels, and iii) decreasing fishing opportunities in the shape of lower quotass. The raw number of fishers tells a story of a sector that in reality, at least in the prosperous countries around the North Sea, provides only few jobs. Despite the above trends indicating positive effects of the most recent fisheries management of the North Sea mixed demersal fisheries there are a row of general problems in the present management. Population dynamics with respect to recruitment variations, sub-populations and changes in distribution of several demersal North Sea stocks influenced by environmental factors besides fishery are not fully understood and taken into consideration in management (and management advice). Also, biological multi-species interactions between the stocks are not fully taken into account in the management of the stocks when setting the MSY management and exploitation limits for the stocks. Management is not based on broader ecosystem and multi-species objectives, but based mainly on single stock objectives. Also technical interactions between fisheries are not taken fully into account in management of the North Sea demersal fisheries. The fisheries targeting cod, whiting, haddock, saithe, flatfish and Nephrops in the North Sea and Kattegat-Skagerrak are mixed demersal fisheries for towed gears. Mixed fisheries considerations are of primary importance for the management of North Sea species. Single stock management is a cause of discarding in mixed fisheries, because individual stock management objectives may not be consistent with each other. As such, the TAC of one species may be exhausted before the TAC of another, leading to catches of valuable fish that cannot be landed resulting in over-quotas discard. Overall, present management and fisheries policy is characterized by the CFP having in many ways taken form of a classical intergovernmentalist, state-centric command-and-control, top-down management system, where member states' ministers in the Council have exercised strong control over the fisheries management measures which have been developed and adopted on the background of proposals from the Commission and the Parliament, though since the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty the Parliament has assumed a role of co-legislator alongside the Council. EC has identified the lack of stakeholder involvement as one of the major weaknesses of the CFP, recognizing that this fact clearly undermine its legitimacy. Establishment of the Regional Advisory Councils (RACs) with the 2003 CFP can be seen as the first formal attempt to generate a network of multi-national, multi-interest advisory organizations with a strong regional focus among other involving resource users in the decision making. However, the RACs have at present only an advisory function on decisions and are not formally integrated directly in management on a regional basis, i.e. the RAC system is primarily intended to provide a regional stakeholder perspective to the Commission's deliberations rather than providing stakeholders with real decision-making authority. RACs constitute, nevertheless, a move towards regionalization of the fisheries policy. Present management is, furthermore, characterized by a high degree of complexity, bureaucracy, and examples of micro-management where different management systems and measures are implemented in parallel making evaluation of impact of the individual measures and systems very complicated and the system suffers from lack of transparency. With respect to the complexity the different management measures are acting top of each other with impact on the same fisheries and stocks at the same time (and with time overlap in their implementation) creating a very complex management and associated advisory system, where it is difficult to distinguish specific effects and impacts of each individual measures implemented. Accordingly, it is also very difficult to make scientific management evaluation and advice associated to the individual measures

How can uncertain fisheries science be linked with good governance processes, thereby increasing fisheries management legitimacy and effectiveness? Reducing the uncertainties around scientific models has long been perceived as the cure of the fisheries management problem. There is however increasing recognition that uncertainty in the numbers will remain. A lack of transparency with respect to these uncertainties can damage the credibility of science. The EU Commission's proposal for a reformed Common Fisheries Policy calls for more self-management for the fishing industry by increasing fishers' involvement in the planning and execution of policies and boosting the role of fishers' organisations. One way of higher transparency and improved participation is to include stakeholders in the modelling process itself. The JAKFISH project (Judgment And Knowledge in Fisheries Involving StakeHolders) invited fisheries stakeholders to participate in the process of framing the management problem, and to give input and evaluate the scientific models that are used to provide fisheries management advice. JAKFISH investigated various tools to assess and communicate uncertainty around fish stock assessments and fisheries management. Here, a synthesis is presented of the participatory work carried out in four European fishery case studies (Western Baltic herring, North Sea Nephrops, Central Baltic Herring and Mediterranean swordfish), focussing on the uncertainty tools used, the stakeholders' responses to these, and the lessons learnt. It is concluded that participatory modelling has the potential to facilitate and structure discussions between scientists and stakeholders about uncertainties and the quality of the knowledge base. It can also contribute to collective learning, increase legitimacy, and advance scientific understanding. However, when approaching real-life situations, modelling should not be seen as the priority objective. Rather, the crucial step in a science–stakeholder collaboration is the joint problem framing in an open, transparent way

How can uncertain fisheries science be linked with good governance processes, thereby increasing fisheries management legitimacy and effectiveness? Reducing the uncertainties around scientific models has long been perceived as the cure of the fisheries management problem. There is however increasing recognition that uncertainty in the numbers will remain. A lack of transparency with respect to these uncertainties can damage the credibility of science. The EU Commission's proposal for a reformed Common Fisheries Policy calls for more self-management for the fishing industry by increasing fishers' involvement in the planning and execution of policies and boosting the role of fishers' organisations. One way of higher transparency and improved participation is to include stakeholders in the modelling process itself. The JAKFISH project (Judgment And Knowledge in Fisheries Involving StakeHolders) invited fisheries stakeholders to participate in the process of framing the management problem, and to give input and evaluate the scientific models that are used to provide fisheries management advice. JAKFISH investigated various tools to assess and communicate uncer- tainty around fish stock assessments and fisheries management. Here, a synthesis is presented of the participatory work carried out in four European fishery case studies (Western Baltic herring, North Sea Nephrops, Central Baltic Herring and Mediterranean swordfish), focussing on the uncertainty tools used, the stakeholders' responses to these, and the lessons learnt. It is concluded that participatory modelling has the potential to facilitate and structure discussions between scientists and stakeholders about uncertainties and the quality of the knowledge base. It can also contribute to collective learning, increase legitimacy, and advance scientific understanding. However, when approaching real-life situations, modelling should not be seen as the priority objective. Rather, the crucial step in a science–stakeholder collaboration is the joint problem framing in an open, transparent way.

How can uncertain fisheries science be linked with good governance processes, thereby increasing fisheries management legitimacy and effectiveness? Reducing the uncertainties around scientific models has long been perceived as the cure of the fisheries management problem. There is however increasing recognition that uncertainty in the numbers will remain. A lack of transparency with respect to these uncertainties can damage the credibility of science. The EU Commission's proposal for a reformed Common Fisheries Policy calls for more self-management for the fishing industry by increasing fishers' involvement in the planning and execution of policies and boosting the role of fishers' organisations. One way of higher transparency and improved participation is to include stakeholders in the modelling process itself. The JAKFISH project (Judgment And Knowledge in Fisheries Involving StakeHolders) invited fisheries stakeholders to participate in the process of framing the management problem, and to give input and evaluate the scientific models that are used to provide fisheries management advice. JAKFISH investigated various tools to assess and communicate uncertainty around fish stock assessments and fisheries management. Here, a synthesis is presented of the participatory work carried out in four European fishery case studies (Western Baltic herring, North Sea Nephrops, Central Baltic Herring and Mediterranean swordfish), focussing on the uncertainty tools used, the stakeholders' responses to these, and the lessons learnt. It is concluded that participatory modelling has the potential to facilitate and structure discussions between scientists and stakeholders about uncertainties and the quality of the knowledge base. It can also contribute to collective learning, increase legitimacy, and advance scientific understanding. However, when approaching real-life situations, modelling should not be seen as the priority objective. Rather, the crucial step in a science–stakeholder collaboration is the joint problem framing ...

One of the most important goals in current fisheries management is to maintain or restore stocks above levels that can produce the maximum sustainable yield (MSY). However,it may not be feasible to achieve MSY simultaneously for multiple species because of trade-offs that result from interactions between species, mixed fisheries and the multiple objectives of stakeholders. The premise in this study is that MSY is a concept that needs adaptation, not wholesale replacement. The approach chosen to identify trade-offs and stakeholder preferences involved a process of consulting and discussing options with stake-holders as well as scenario modelling with bio-economic and multi-species models. It is difficult to intuitively anticipate the consequences of complex trade-offs and it is also complicated to address them from a political point of view. However,scenario modelling showed that the current approach of treating each stock separately and ignoring trade-offs may result in unacceptable ecosystem, economic or social effects in North Sea fisheries. Setting FMSY as a management target without any flexibility for compromises may lead to disappointment for some of the stakeholders. To treat FMSY no longer as a point estimate but rather as a "Pretty Good Yield" within sustainable ranges was seen as a promising way forward to avoid unacceptable outcomes when trying to fish all stocks simultaneously at FMSY. This study gives insights on how inclusive governance can help to reach consensus in difficult political processes, and how science can be used to make informed decisions inside a multi-dimensional trade-off space.

This study compares the details and performance of fisheries management between the EU and a selection of other countries worldwide: Iceland, New Zealand, and Australia, which are considered in many respects to be among the most advanced in the world in fisheries management. Fisheries management in the EU, Iceland, Australia, and New Zealand has developed following different paths, despite being based on similar instruments and principles. Iceland, Australia, and New Zealand have been at the forefront of developing management practices such as stakeholder involvement, legally binding management targets (Australia, New Zealand), individual transferable quotas, and discard bans (Iceland, New Zealand). The EU has since the beginning of the 21st century taken significant steps to better involve stakeholders and establish quantitative targets through management plans, and a landing obligation is gradually being implemented from 2015 onward. The management of domestic fisheries resources in Australia, New Zealand, and Iceland has, overall, performed better than in the EU, in terms of conservation and economic efficiency. It should, however, be stressed that, compared to Australia, New Zealand, and Iceland, (i) initial over-capacity was more of an issue in the EU when management measures became legally binding and also that (ii) EU has been progressive in developing common enforcement standards, on stocks shared by sovereign nations. The situation of EU fisheries has substantially improved over the period 2004–2013 in the northeast Atlantic, with fishery status getting close to that in the other jurisdictions, but the lack of recovery for Mediterranean fish stocks remains a concern.

Stakeholder involvement is perceived as an important development in the European Common Fisheries Policy. But how can uncertain fisheries science be linked with good governance processes, thereby increasing fisheries management legitimacy and effectiveness? Reducing the uncertainties around scientific models has long been perceived as the cure of the fisheries management problem. There is however increasing recognition that uncertainty in the numbers will remain. A lack of transparency with respect to these uncertainties can damage the credibility of science. The project Judgement and Knowledge in Fisheries Involving Stakeholders (JAKFISH) was a 3 year project with 10 partners from the EU and Norway. It provided an integrated approach to stakeholder involvement into fisheries management and examined the institutions, practices and tools that allow complexity, uncertainty and ambiguity to be dealt with. The JAKFISH project reviewed the general literature on participatory modelling in natural resource management and derived a number of key recommendations from that review. The project also developed a fisheries management simulation game that was successfully applied in a number of occasions. In four different case studies, the JAKFISH project invited fisheries stakeholders to participate in the process of framing the management problem, and to give input and evaluate the scientific models that are used to provide fisheries management advice. JAKFISH investigated various tools to assess and communicate uncertainty around fish stock assessments and fisheries management. We conclude that participatory modelling has the potential to facilitate and structure discussions between scientists and stakeholders about uncertainties and the quality of the knowledge base. It can also contribute to collective learning, increase legitimacy, and advance scientific understanding. Modelling should not be seen as the priority objective. The crucial step in a science-stakeholder collaboration is the joint problem framing. The JAKFISH project also carried out social network analyses of the institutions and networks involved in six fisheries management systems (four in Europe, one in Australia and one in the USA). The results suggest that management systems with high participation in decision-making tended to have more disagreement about facts and values. When experts discuss matters more with colleagues from other stakeholder groups, their values, interests, opinions, and knowledge tend to differ. Consensus within a stakeholder group seems to be higher if the most important discussion partners are selected within the group. The discussion about the role of uncertainty in natural resource management and decision-making often assumes that it is the scientists that help other stakeholder better understand uncertainties and that this happens after the uncertainties have been identified. Our research refuted both assumption. Communication about uncertainty is clearly a two-way process and it already is happening during the problem framing and research process. An important difference has been identified between scientific proof-making and scientific justification. Scientific proof-making is evaluated against set of internal scientific criteria. Scientific justification is evaluated by a broader community consisting of scientific peers, government officials, industry stakeholders and environmental NGOs. Whether scientific uncertainty becomes an issue in a policy making context, not only depends on the amount of uncertainty, but also on the stakes involved and the burden of proof placed on the science. The claim in the EU Habitats Directive that site designation is an exclusively scientific exercise places all the burden of proof on the science which then triggers disproportionate attention to scientific complexity and uncertainty, particularly where stakes are high. The JAKFISH project has shown that participatory modelling requires an effective facilitation strategy where scientists, stakeholders and policy-makers actively connect and discuss. There is a need to train the participants in these process. It needs the realization that participatory modelling both builds trust and is built on trust, that it takes time and effort and that the outcome is more than the individual parts.