Fish Fight Charter – Seafish response Seafish supports the overall concept of establishing MPA’s in order to protect the marine environment. MPA’s are already playing an important role and the UK fishing industry has played a significant role in helping establish, monitor and designate the areas for protection. Seafish had produced its own guide to MPA’s available at the following link: http://www.seafish.org/media/sustainability/marine-protection/marine-protected-areas 1.
Seafish supports carefully considered and discriminating use of MPAs in order to protect the environment with varying degrees of restrictions on fishing activity, tailored to the local circumstances of particular areas, as they can have benefits for our seas, fishermen and their communities. But blanket networks of MPAs (such as the ones called for in the Fish Fight Charter), indiscriminately placed throughout the coastline, will achieve neither environmental nor commercial goals.
2.
There is a false assumption that MPAs bring unalloyed environmental benefit. On the contrary, not having the correct science or displacing fishing activity from MPAs could negate the ecological benefits afforded by an MPA network. Research has shown that MPAs are best suited to areas of low fishing intensity where seabed communities have the best chance of recovering and the environmental effect of displacing fishing is less compared to displacing vessels from heavily fished grounds to areas of high sensitivity.
3.
There is a strong case for designating areas of low fishing intensity as MPAs. Moreover, MPAs should be continually monitored, their effectiveness reviewed and designation flexible to allow for de-designation and / or the proposal of alternative sites should MPAs fail to achieve their objectives. However, what is not justified is the application of the so-called ‘precautionary principle’ to install a vast network of MPAs just in case they may prove useful in the future.
4.
Seafish rejects the claim that No Take Zones (NTZs) are justified to protect commercial fish stocks in temperate waters, because there is no empirical evidence of such benefits. The latest research at Lundy MCZ (marine reserve) has shown very little change since potting was banned in 2003: “From the results, we conclude that potting for lobsters and crabs in inshore waters seems to have no detectable effects over the timescale of the experiment. In addition to being management goals/tools in their own right, strongly protected areas such as Sanctuary/No-Take Zones provide an opportunity to test experimental hypotheses about the effects of fishing. Our study shows there were no conservation benefits, in terms of the investigated species, arising from exclusion of potting in this Marine
Protected Area (MPA). For some MPAs it may be possible to permit limited potting to allow small-scale artisanal fisheries to persist.” Ref: Coleman, R.A., Hoskin, M.G., Carlshausen, E. von & Davis, C.M. (2013). Using a no-take zone to assess the impacts of fishing: Sessile epifauna appear insensitive to environmental disturbances from commercial potting. Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology, 440: 100-107. 5.
The Charter’s notions of bottom trawling and dredging are, in Seafish’s view, simplistic, indiscriminate, and scientifically illiterate, revealing a profound ignorance of modern day fisheries practice. Mobile gear can be compatible with MPA objectives, such as sea floor protection, especially in areas where natural disturbance exceeds disturbance caused by mobile gear. We point to the Shetland scallop fishery that has achieved MSC accreditation and the Western Channel scallop fishery that is working towards it as examples of this.
6.
Despite calls for more MPAs by the Charter, in our view there is a limit to what can be achieved in one tranche with the need to test the evidence base, prioritise, agree management arrangements and get the resources in place in order to do the management. These are all vitally important aspects of MPA management and the charter takes no account of good practice instead choosing to focus on over-hasty designation of areas that lack both the required science and detail of effective implementation.
7.
The Charter takes a negative view of shellfish fisheries ‘fishing down the food chain’ and implies they are somehow asset stripping our seas. The facts are (1) that most shellfisheries have been active for centuries; (2) the recent shift from whitefish to shellfish fisheries is an example of adaptive management; and (3) diverting fishing effort temporally from species such as cod that are currently recovering has actually helped certain stocks.
8.
The Charter and campaign are many years behind the industry when it comes to protecting the environment. The fishing industry is devoting considerable time and effort to investigating the extent and severity of benthic damage caused to cold water coral reefs and other marine habitats by dredging gear. The industry has been working together with environmental groups, scientists and government for many years now to achieve win-win solutions, benefitting both the marine environment and the food economy.
9.
Trawling has been taking place for centuries and many bottom trawled fisheries have achieved MSC accreditation in recent years which supports our views on it being compatible with environmental protection in certain areas.
We have already noted the Shetland scallop dredge sector as one example and the list below highlights other bottom trawl fisheries with accreditation. http://www.msc.org/track-a-fishery/fisheries-in-the-program/certified/north-east-atlantic: ► ► ► ► ► ► ► ► ► ► ► ► ► ► ► ► ► ► ► ► ► ► ► 10.
UK Fisheries/DFFU/Doggerbank Northeast Arctic cod, haddock and saithe UK Fisheries/DFFU/Doggerbank Group saithe Scottish Fisheries Sustainable Accreditation Group (SFSAG) North Sea haddock Scapêche and Compagnie de Pêche de St. Malo saithe Osprey Trawlers North Sea twin-rigged plaice Norway North Sea saithe Küstenfischer Nord eG Heiligenhafen Eastern Baltic cod IGP Icelandic haddock IGP Icelandic cod Germany North Sea saithe trawl Germany Eastern Baltic cod Fiskbranschens Sweden Eastern Baltic cod Faroe Island North East Arctic haddock Faroe Island North East Arctic cod Euronor saithe Ekofish Group-North Sea twin rigged otter trawl plaice DFPO Denmark North Sea sole DFPO Denmark North Sea & Skagerrak saithe DFPO Denmark North Sea & Skagerrak haddock DFPO Denmark North Sea plaice DFPO Denmark Eastern Baltic cod Cooperative Fishery Organisation (CVO) North Sea plaice and sole Barents Sea cod and Barents Sea haddock
There are already sites which perform the function of reference areas, some of which have been instigated by the fishing industry itself. There are examples of UK fishermen supporting marine reserves and engaging in their design, location, objectives and monitoring, such as the Blue Marine foundation initiative in Lyme Bay: http://www.bluemarinefoundation.com/news-index/newsdetail.aspx?newsStory=Lyme%20Bay%20deal%20hailed%20as%20blueprint%20for% 20the%20future This is not a new campaign. The industry has worked actively and closely with scientists, NGOs and government on the development of MPAs, giving their time, faith and valuable commercial data for many years. It is our belief that more MPA’s are to be considered anyway once the science is available and we question the value of a charter of this nature when the task is already in firmly in hand.