Suchergebnisse

The FarFish project facilitated an international final conference in the last month of the project. The aim of the conference was to disseminate key results of the project to the external community and stakeholders interested in the subject. The conference had been planned as a physical event in Brussels but was in the end run as an online event, due to COVID. The conference consisted of 13 presentations and panel discussions. The presentations had been pre-recorded and translated to English, Spanish and French, and the panel discussions were as well translated (live) to the same languages. The conference ran as planned and without any technical difficulties. The attendees were mostly happy with the conference and considered it as a success. The importance of providing translations was highlighted by the non-EU participants, as well as the fact that having the event online allowed a big group of stakeholders to attend. All of the conference proceedings (in all three languages) are available on the FarFish webpage https://www.farfish.eu/farfish-final-conference/ were it will be maintained for at least the next three years. ; The research leading to these results received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No. 727891/FarFish project.

This report provides an overall review of the FarFish project regarding project progress and main results. The project started in June 2017 and came to an end in November 2021. The main objective of the project was to "improve knowledge on and management of EU fisheries outside Europe, while contributing to sustainability and long-term profitability". Looking back on what the project has delivered it is safe to say that it has made significant contributions towards its main objective. The FarFish project has now come to an end, after 4 ½ years of intensive research and innovation involving close to 200 scientists and stakeholders from across the world. Multidisciplinary team of experts from research, academia, governance & policy, fishing industry and NGO sectors have collaborated to contribute to more sustainable and profitable fisheries in long-distance waters. The aim of this report is to give an overview of the work done within the project and present the main results. FarFish is funded by the EU H2020 research and innovation programme and has the objective to improve knowledge on and management of EU fisheries outside Europe, while contributing to sustainability and long-term profitability. The EU fleet operates in long-distance waters around the world, either in international waters or within the waters of coastal states that have allowed access to surplus stocks via bilateral agreements. A total of 21% of the EU fleets catches are as results caught in non-EU waters. The fisheries within these waters are however often poorly regulated, management decisions are sometimes based on limited knowledge and enforcement capabilities, compliance and trust between stakeholders tend to lack. The EU does at the same time expect the EU fleets to set an example for other fleets regarding sustainability and best practice. FarFish addresses the challenges faced by the EU fleet in long-distance waters in a multidisciplinary and innovative way by focusing on six diverse case studies, four within the waters of African ...

A key component of the FarFish project was the development of so-called Management Recommendations (MRs) in the project's six case studies. The case studies included two high-seas areas and four areas where the EU has negotiated access for its long-distance fleets in Sustainable Fisheries Partnership Agreements (SFPAs). The case studies were in the Southwest Atlantic international waters (FAO area 41), the Southeast Atlantic international waters (FAO area 47, SEAFO Convection Area), The Cape Verde SFPA fishery, the Senegal SFPA fishery, the Mauritania SFPA fishery and the Seychelles SFPA fishery. The concept behind the approach of developing MRs was the idea that stakeholder driven, bottom-up methodologies in development and implementation of fisheries management could be more efficient than the current top-down micromanagement approaches. The concept is based on Results-Based Management (RBM) approaches and had been developed and tested in previous FP7 and H2020 projects (EcoFishMan, MareFrame and ClimeFish). To facilitate uptake and relevance of the approach beyond the FarFish project, the general guidelines for making MRs tailored for the EU fleet operating outside EU waters entered the open process of creating a CEN Workshop Agreement (CWA). CEN is the European Committee for Standardization. CEN Workshop Agreements are, by definition, CEN reference documents (although sometimes referred to as low-level standards). By publishing the guidelines as a CWA, the final document needs to be compliant with the rules of CEN and have gone through an open, transparent and inclusive process, as described and provided by CEN. CWAs are valid for 3 years, with possible 3-year extension if requested by committee members. The CWAs are distributed by CEN and apply to rules and regulations of CEN (including IPR rules). In most cases the CWAs remain as reference documents, but in some instances the CWA become basis for ISO standards. The CWA process was initiated on 13 May 2020 with a public announcement on the CEN and FarFish ...

This report summarises the progress and main outputs when it comes to development of visualisation materials and visualisation tools within the FarFish project. Development of visualisation materials and other visualisation tools that allow stakeholders to easily understand otherwise complicate data on e.g. biological, ecological, economic, social and political issues relevant for the six FarFish case studies is an important component of the FarFish project. These visualisation materials and tools have the purpose of assisting stakeholders within the case studies when developing Management Recommendations (MRs), by sowing in a simple manner historic data and forecasts. The forecasts are in particular intended to provide stakeholders with most likely scenarios or effects of MR implementation (what if? scenarios). The visualisation materials and other visualisation tools do also have an important purpose for overall aim of the FarFish project, when it comes to advancing knowledge on fisheries in the case studies, both for internal use within the project and for stakeholders outside of the project. The FarFish project is run in an iterative process, which amongst other things means that MRs will be developed, tested/validated and audited/valuated twice during the lifetime of the project. The second MRs (MR2) are to be developed and audited in the second half of the project. The visualisation materials and other visualisation tools are also expected to go through similar iterative process, where first and second versions are intended to assist stakeholders with developing MR1 and MR2. This deliverable reports on the progress and current status of the visualisation materials and visualisation tools that have been, or are intended to be, made available within the FarFish project to support MR2 development.

This report contains the 2nd draft of general guidelines for making management recommendations (MRs) tailored for the EU fleet operating outside European waters; in accordance with the responsive fisheries management system (RFMS). The RFMS is a management approach founded on the concept of results-based management (RBM), where responsibility for fisheries management is to a point transferred to resource users, provided that they meet with necessary requirements set forth by the competent authorities and document that they can achieve specified management objectives. These 2nd draft guidelines follow up on the 1st version, which were developed within FarFish in early stages of the project. Stakeholders representing the relevant authorities and the EU fleet, as well as any other stakeholders with vested interests in the specific fisheries have followed the 1st draft version of these guidelines in order to develop 1st version MRs for their fisheries. These MRs have now been reviewed and audited; and the feedback used to improve the guidelines. This process will now be repeated within the project, as these 2nd draft general guidelines will be tested/validated within the FarFish case studies. The third and final version of the guidelines will then be published as a voluntary European standard (CEN Workshop Agreement) at the end of the project.

More than 20% of the European fishing fleets catches are taken from non-European waters. Access to these waters is often based on agreements with coastal states that allow the EU fleet to fish from surplus stocks in return for financial support. These agreements have been subjected to criticism, as these fisheries are sometimes poorly regulated and management decisions are often based on limited knowledge, compliance, and enforcement capabilities. It is also too often the case that trust between stakeholders is lacking. The aim of the FarFish project is to overcome these hurdles. The FarFish project is designed around six case study areas in which the European fleet is actively engaged in fishing activities, including Cape Verde, Mauritania, Senegal and Seychelles, as well as the international high-seas areas in the southeast and southwest Atlantic. In this context of geographic, economic and cultural diversity, the project will gain insights into the sustainability of commercially important species. Significant focus of the FarFish project is placed on education, knowledge transfer, and improving professional skills and competences of stakeholders within the case studies and beyond within the field of fisheries management. This includes education and knowledge transfer to a wide variety of stakeholders within the respective value chains, utilising different means; such as social media, e-learning, Tutor-web, a special university-level certificate program in Marine Management and Innovation and a six-month post-graduate program tailor-made for FarFish. This document reports on the setup and launching of the six-month post-graduate program, which was launched in September 2018 and will graduate at least five students before end of the FarFish project. Two students have already been graduated when this report is published and four more have been invited to join the programme in September 2019.

Executive Summary This document is the second deliverable in work package 5 of the DiscardLess project. The project is intended to contribute to a successful implementation of the landing obligation of the reformed Common Fisheries Policy of the EU. The work package 5 addresses how unwanted, unavoidable catches can be handled on-board the fishing vessels i.e. from catch to first sale. The objective of this deliverable is to identify available alternatives and recommend the most applicable solutions for on-board handling of these unwanted, unavoidable catches for four different fleet segments in three case studies. The case studies are North Sea, Bay of Biscay and Northeast Atlantic (Iceland and UK), but the selection of vessels has taken into consideration transferability to other European fleets and areas. Practical and cost efficient solutions are identified, adapted and developed for four different fleet segments based on input from different tasks in the project (1.4, 5.1, 6.1 & 6.2) and stakeholder interaction. The fleet segments selected are 10-15 meter hook & line coastal vessels typically operated in Northeast Atlantic, 18-30 meter Danish seine/bottom trawl vessels typically operated in the North Sea and adjacent areas, 34-44 meter Bay of Biscay bottom trawlers typically operated by the Spanish fleet and finally 40-60 meter fresh-fish bottom trawlers used by most EU offshore fleets. Solutions for sorting, bleeding, cleaning, chilling, pre-processing, storing and other on-board handling are suggested and evaluated based on need, cost and applicability. Some parts of the work include elements of technological innovation, but most rely on exploiting currently available solutions, applying "best practice" technology and knowledge. Recommended solutions are presented on deck-plans (drawings) in order for stakeholders to get a clearer picture of the suggested changes. The work presented in this report focuses on the four previously mentioned fleet types that provide a relatively good cross-section of ...

Executive Summary: This report is intended to contribute to a successful implementation of the landing obligation (LO) of the reformed Common Fisheries Policy of the EU. The work package focuses on how unavoidable, unwanted catches (UUC) can be utilised once they have been landed. The first step in that work is to provide an overview of current and expected supplies of UUC, where and when they will be landed, what are the available facilities and how the set-up is at the landing harbours to cope with changing supplies effected by the LO. This document addresses that by focusing on five selected fisheries, which will be key case studies in future work within the work package i.e. Bay of Biscay (landings in the Basque country), North Sea (Danish fleet) and Iceland. Landing and discarding statistics from the Mediterranean (bottom trawlers landing in Mallorca) and the English Channel (French fleet) are also analysed. The role of Iceland in this report is to provide an example of where a LO has been successfully in effect for decades. Estimating future landings of what used to be discarded under a policy regime that obliged fishermen to discard UUC cannot realistically take into consideration changes in behaviour of fishermen that inevitably will occur. Once the LO is implemented the fishermen will change their practises, for example by avoiding areas with high volumes of UUC or by applying more selective fishing gear. The historic discard data can therefore only give indications on what UUC are likely to be landed in certain areas, as well as when and by which fleets. The general results from all of the case studies is that relatively few species and fleets account for most of the discards. There are also in most fisheries very few harbours that stand out, representing vast majority of the discards. The available facilities are in most cases going to be sufficient to cope with changing supplies of catches intended for production of products for human consumption. Catches below Minimum Conservation Reference Size ...

This paper summarizes the lessons learnt from the implementation of a practical approach to Results-based Management (RBM) within the EU H2020 FarFish project, where RBM is conceptualized as a contract situation. From these lessons a set of policy recommendations for the improvement of the fisheries management through the adoption of RBM for EU vessels fishing in international- and Sustainable Fisheries Partnership Agreements (SFPA) waters were put forward. The policy recommendations are based on key project outputs and additional semi-structured interviews on the experiences of project partners. This exercise revealed advancements and shortcomings for the broader implementation of a more participatory, inclusive, and responsive approach to fisheries governance. Meaningful and effective participation was a pivotal factor for the success of the process. Absence of relevant bodies, sectors and fleet segments proved detrimental throughout all cases. The importance of scoping, goal setting and timing of the actions, as well as managing realistic expectations within the RBM, were highlighted. Data availability and accountability was pivotal, as in cases were cooperation succeeded, data was made available, and knowledge was expanded and enriched. The implementation of this approach to RBM showed great potential when extended to other aspects of fisheries' management, fishing categories and fleets. This structured approach to RBM provides a promising alternative to current fisheries management systems across the world.

More than 20% of the European fishing fleets catches are taken from non-European waters. Access to these waters is often based on agreements with coastal states that allow the EU fleet to fish from surplus stocks in return for financial support. These agreements have been subjected to criticism, as these fisheries are sometimes poorly regulated and management decisions are often based on limited knowledge, compliance, and enforcement capabilities. It is also too often the case that trust between stakeholders is lacking. The aim of the FarFish project is to overcome these hurdles. The FarFish project is designed around six case study areas in which the European fleet is actively engaged in fishing activities, including Cape Verde, Mauritania, Senegal and Seychelles, as well as the international high-seas areas in the southeast and southwest Atlantic. Among the Research & Innovation outputs of the FarFish project is a development of a management approach where the management authorities and the resource users come to an agreement on some key objectives and how to meet them. This approach is designed to reduce micromanagement by involving stakeholders and increase the degree of co-management by delegating management responsibilities to resource users. The process is broken into a number of steps, which include a) the provision of guidelines on how to develop so called management recommendations (MRs), b) provision of an invitation from the authorities to the resource users to develop MRs, where overall objectives are established, c) development of MRs, d) third party audit of the MR, where the success of the MR is evaluated. Draft guidelines and MR invitations have been published, and this report compiles the first proposals for MRs for each of the FarFish case studies. These will then be audited by an independent auditor and the whole process will then be re-iterated. The aim is that by the end of the project, we will have a tested / validated approach for how to manage fisheries in cocreation between ...

The FarFish project published a so called "Legacy booklet" towards the end of the project, which is intended to summarise progress and key results to a wider audience e.g. to stakeholders that do not have scientific background or expert knowledge on the main project topics. The publication of this "project summary report aimed at a wider audience" was described in the original project description as follows: Task 7.8 Project summary report aimed at a wider audience: In order to make the project results widely known and understood by everyone with an interest in the subject, the project coordinator will produce a project summary report at the end of the project. The report will describe in layman-terms the project as a whole, the main challenges and the most important results. This will facilitate dissemination to a wider audience, which will be important when considering the wide range of stakeholders connected to the subject. The "Legacy booklet" is presented in this report ; The research leading to these results received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No. 727891/FarFish project.