The North Sea Regional Advisory Council says it is well through its programme of port visits to discuss its draft long-term management plan for nephrops with vessel operators in the prawn fishery.
This is a pioneering initiative to ensure that the council's advice on a long term management plan is developed with close engagement of grass-roots fishers. Port meetings with fishers have been held in Whitley Bay/North Shields, Fraserburgh, Eyemouth, and most recently Pittenweem. Further meetings in the Netherlands and Denmark will complete the first round of discussions.
This is the first time an international exercise in close grass roots stakeholder engagement has been attempted and already it is clear that a huge number of useful and relevant comments have been made; these will now be taken into account as final drafts of the RAC’s advice are prepared.
The long-term plan is centred on three main objectives: A sustainable fishery – in terms of present and future harvesting of the nephrops stocks; a profitable fishery – generating sufficient revenue to renew the fleet without subsidy and providing crews with a reasonable income and an ecologically balanced fishery– where ecological impacts are within limits broadly acceptable to wider society.
The council says that what has come across strongly from the meetings so far is a core of common concerns, as well as the diversity within the nephrops fishery. Concerns that have been voiced include:
* Blunt management measures applied at both EU and national levels that do more harm than good and frequently fail to achieve their objectives
* The implications of nephrops as “the fishery of last resort” as vessels attempt to escape punitive measures in the whitefish fisheries by focussing their efforts on the prawn fisheries.
* The vulnerability of some nephrops fisheries to periodic high levels of effort
* The low price of prawns at certain times of the year, often resulting from seasonal over-supply
* Transitional support to help the fleets adapt to the a long-term plan based on some proxy for maximum sustainable yield.
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