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BRITAIN'S shell fishermen now look almost certain to face a cap on their fishing activities within the next couple of years, but at the moment they don't know precisely what form it will take.
A major debate has opened up on the issue and it is likely to lead to some fierce arguments in the month ahead.
The National Federation of Fishermen's Organisation which now represents many of the country's shell fishermen said the idea of capping effort in the UK crab and lobster fisheries has been in circulation for many years without making any significant headway.
These conservation arguments have been given additional impetus by periodic price collapses in the brown crab market caused by seasonal overproduction in relation to market demand. The case is also made that sensible conservation measures taken early are much less difficult for the industry to absorb than when stocks are in decline and the economic pressures greater
For many years the favoured approach advanced by scientists and Defra was the application of a national-pot-limitation scheme, but this has now been overtaken by a rights-based management approach, says the NFFO - ie define and allocate fishing rights to those identified as active within the crab and lobster fisheries using a recent reference period to determine eligibility; establish fishing rights that would define an entitlement to a per-cent share of a national TAC and allocate rights based on a track record of participation in the crab and lobster fisheries during a reference period (probably 2007-10, or the highest 12 months within that period) plus other moves.
The NFFO said it was clear that in developing a coherent and meaningful NFFO shellfish policy, the sector is confronted with two mutually incompatible viewpoints with narratives that draw on different aspects of the issue but which both have a strong internal logic. Both are supported to some degree or other by different parts of the NFFO’s membership.
A possible NFFO Shellfish Policy could take account of:-
The distinction between the inshore fleet in which catches are made by relatively small (generally under 12m) vessels and the offshore, nomadic offshore fleet whose catches of brown crab are of a magnitude higher; taking account those fisheries which have extended offshore (like Bridlington) but are still prosecuted by non-vivier vessels and
* We could support a cap on the expansion of the high-catching sector of the fleet through a special shellfish licence that would restrict entry to this part of the shellfish fleet; the rest of the (inshore) shellfish fleet however would address stock conservation through regionalised and customised management measures and would not be subject to such a cap
* We could argue that Defra’s ideas for extending rights based management to the shellfish sector are unconvincing for the following reasons:
* Effective rights based-management requires secure and exclusive rights and that would not be the case as outside the six mile limit the resource shared with other member states; there is also a danger that the UK shellfish industry could disadvantage its future prospects by restricting itself at this juncture if landings are subsequently used to determine a relative stability share of the resource
* We do not consider that the stock assessments for shellfish are of a quality that would allow for a level of precision that could reliably produce regional TACs; although this might not be a problem in the first instance with a fixed “national TAC” set for five years, it would quickly become a problem if a more restrictive approach was envisaged
* We have to concede that if Defra go ahead with the extension of rights base management to the inshore fleet, and latent licences will receive nil FQAs there is a probability of further migration of effort into the shellfish sector; the question that we have to ask ourselves is: is this a price worth paying for retaining the traditional flexibility in the inshore sector..
* the full report is available on www.nffo.org.co.uk
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