Fishermen can reduce discards, trial reveals

THE amount of fish thrown overboard as “discards” can be dramatically reduced by a scheme in which fishermen must count all the fish they catch towards their quotas, a report suggested yesterday.

Under current rules, which govern fishing across EU countries, fishermen have quotas for certain fish, but can carry on fishing once the limits are reached as long as they do not bring any more of that species to shore.

As a result, tonnes of edible fish which exceed the quota are thrown back to sea as “discards”, which European Fisheries Commissioner Maria Damanaki recently suggested accounted for as much as half the overall catch in some EU fisheries.

The issue of wasting fish in this way is a major one, as three-quarters of EU fish stocks are overfished.

In trials of the “catch quota” scheme in Britain, English fishermen catching West Channel sole and North Sea cod have to bring to land all of the fish of those species they catch, so they all count as part of their quota. While they have a larger quota than they would otherwise, once they have used it up, they must stop fishing completely.

Onboard monitoring, including CCTV cameras, is used to check whether fishermen follow the rules.

A report by the Marine Management Organisation (MMO) which has been managing the trial, suggests fishermen involved in the scheme discard less than 1% of the cod and sole caught.

This compares to an average of more than one-fifth (21%) for North Sea cod and 9% of sole in the Western Channel which is caught and then discarded because it exceeds quotas set by Brussels.

The trial’s manager, Julian Roberts, said the study showed fishermen were being more selective about where they fished and were using better gear which targets bigger fish and avoids juvenile specimens.

He said: “Fishermen in the trial are demonstrating that they can avoid catching small, low-value fish which might otherwise be discarded.”

The main aim of the trial was to test the efficacy of the remote electronic monitoring and use of CCTV to check what the fishermen were doing.

The report concludes that the system is effective, with just 0.25% of quota fish discarded.

Fisheries Minister Richard Benyon said that under the current EU rules, set out in the Common Fisheries Policy, fishermen were allowed to catch unlimited amounts of fish as long as they do not bring more than their quota back to port.