Welcome to the Seafood Matters Podcast. I'm your host Jim Cowie. In each
episode will dive into the world of seafood and by chatting with fishermen, fishery
scientists, and seafood chefs, will highlight the importance of seafood in our daily
lives, economy, and environment. Whether you catch your own seafood, love
cooking it, or want to learn more about where your fish comes from,
you'll find it all here on the Seafood Matters Podcast. Today, we have
the privilege of hosting doctor Mark Dickie, colis the Chair of the Advisory Committee
of the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea, ices to discuss fishery's
management and stock assessment, shedding light on how quotas are calculated, explains how
seasonality is factored into the science of stock assessment. We also discuss how unreported
and unregulated catches are accounted for in the realms of fishery science. Join us
as we journey through the geography of c areas, delving into the factors that
influence quota assessments for different species. I sees the International Council for the Expiration
the Sea carries out about two hundred bits of advice that we give to governments,
and that's mostly based on stock assessments, about one hundred of the bits
of advice, and the stock assessments look at the information, the data that
comes from fishing industry and also from surveys and puts it all together and we
look at how quickly the fish are dying, and we look at the general
number of fish that are in the in the system as a whole. The
other one hundred or so we actually use what we call data limited approaches,
which aren't really stock assessments in terms of the old fashioned type, but they're
based on what trends can we detect from things like survey information alone rather than
using the catches as well. And hope do you go about that the vessels
at sea or dear are you on board fishing board? Personally myself, I'm
extremely land based. My job is now to work and oversee the entire system
which produces the two hundred and forty pieces of annual advice that come through.
But the network as a whole is over three thousand scientists working with fishing industry
and working with institutes to gather all the information, data and the catch statistics
and other relevant things such as plankton and TV service. Could you give us
an example of some of those two hundred and fifty pieces of annual advice?
What an earth is that? What on earth is that is? It's the
classic ones are, for instance, once a year for northern shelf cod we
give the advice to Norway, UK and EU, which feeds into all their
different policies. Another one might be for such as spur Dog, which is
a bit data limited, and that feeds into all of the organizations in the
Northeast Atlantic because they're so widespread. Another piece of advice could be the bycatch
of dolphins in the Bay of Biscayale the Baltic Sea, by fishing industry and
other organizations and other activities that are ongoing. So it's it's a real mix
of stuff that comes through. But about about two hundred of the two hundred
and forty focus very much on what we call the fishing opportunities advice. And
you're talking about in a global perspective or a European I'm talking North Atlantic,
Northeast Atlantic. The icy's advisory area goes from the Baltic Sea to the Arctic
to the assorb and in the case of salmon, all and eel all the
way over to the USA and Canadian coast and certainly around Greenland as well.
Yes, it's as in market, I thing that I often find fisherman like,
it's refraser. Fishermen tell me that it confuses me, and I just
wonder how they handle it in their log when they're logging it. But when
you're seeing the North Atlantic, like a boat's fishing at rocal, some species
can if they just say that to me. Let's say we're out in the
We're out on rocal at Rocal on a fishing boat. We just hauled our
net. We have multispecies in the net, and when it's coming to the
if there were, say example, monkfish and cord and haddock in the same
net in the same fishing area at the same time, and yet they have
to be recorded differently, one will maybe be west of Scotland and another would
be roccal. Yeah, that's based on our understanding of the biology of those
organisms, where the fish are likely, how much which they are going to
migrate, and also how they interbreed. So, for instance, in the
North Atlantic, all of the eel are one stock and yet all of the
salmon come from different rivers. And in the case of for instance, hake
and blue whiting, we're assuming there's one large, biologically distinct stock across the
whole area. And in the case of some of the flatfish, for instance,
we're assuming there's a lot less movement and they're much more associated with specific
areas, so you will catch them in your nets mixed together. But actually
the life histories can be quite different of those organisms, and that's why they
come out in advice by stocks. It is a weakness in our system.
You're right in highlighting that, because actually what fisheries management is trying to do
is manage fisheries. We don't manage fish stocks, and yet we give advice
on the basis of fish stocks, and that is a real conundrum for us.
It's that we need to move to a system where the fleets and the
gears are managed rather than those stocks themselves. I'd like to ask you how
scientists determine the territorial history of a lemon sool or a monk fish. Which
part of the fish tells you where it's from. Well, we're assuming that
it's in a place because that's well it's caught somewhere where it should be.
These things do change, like mackerel running off to Iceland and Greenland, but
generally we look at overall this goes back to where the fissuer is begun and
how the stock structure was built up. In two thousand and nine I published
a paper on the genetics structure of stocks in the North atlandetic with the chap
called Reese, and from that we showed that historically the original stocks were based
on the catch statistics, and then as the biology became better and better known,
we managed to adapt those labels of stocks to those life histories. So
we know a really good local fish is a dab. A dab hardly moves
at all, and if you put a dab next to a place, they
look quite similar, but place move a huge amount. Something a bit similar
with whiting and cod move a huge amount. From the biology, we assume
that the whiting don't move as much as the cod. So those are the
things that we're taking into account in those situations. And now in the last
five to ten years we have a large number of genetic studies going on.
The Pelagic industry have paid for a huge amount of work on horsemackerel, and
there's ongoing work on the herring stock structure across from the Baltic all the way
over to Iceland. So there's a lot of work going on to try and
confirm or disprove these stock structures. Certainly at ices for the last fifteen years
with the United Kingdom and with the EU, we're pushing very hard that the
advice needs to be what we call more mixed fissure is based. And that's
because, as you well know, if you have a lot of haddock in
the North Sea and you have a limitation caused by the cod, you're not
going to give the right management advice based on only cod when you have a
need to catch haddock as well. So what went wrong is we became focused
quite heavily on assuming that the system is fixed and the system can be managed
by only trying to to manage each individual fish stock through some specific lever of
fisheries management, and that can't work because almost all of our fisheriesm mix fisheries,
and all of our fisheries have impacts on the ecosystem and benefits from the
ecosystem, and there's no way in a single stock approach that we can really
move forward, and certainly with climate change that's going to get eaten trickier.
I mean the spread of hake. No one has that sort of on their
radar fifteen twenty years ago, did they, that you're going to have so
much hake coming around Scotland. So all of those things are an assumption that
everything in the system is fixed. And it's not. Regarding your comment there
about climate change the way you just said that, you've almost suggested climate change
is something that's just started, that there's always been climate change. Yeah,
but these temperature increases are really quite radical that we're seeing now. I mean,
we'd just been through twenty twenty three with this rampant heat wave across the
North Atlantic and we see it in the planktern, we see it in the
fish. That these are unprecedented changes. Don't get confused though, I see
a lot of people saying that the arrival of bluefin tuna is due to climate
change. But blue in tuna have been around these the islands of the United
Kingdom for centuries and in fact they come and go the whole time. So
the heating of the water would help the tuna. But we've had periods in
the nineteen fifties, in the nineteen thirties when there were lots of blof in
tuna around. Yeah, I agree. I've thought it has been my thought
Mark that when you see there about multi species, I often think that our
own Scotland did particularly. But maybe we'll say the UK must be one of
the biggest multi species fisheries in the world. I've actually heard you say that
before, Jim, and I'm not sure that's true, nor am I,
because because fishermen in the Mediterranean would be a ghas to hear you say that,
and the and in the Caribbean and Hawaii they really are exceptionally multi species.
We are multi species and have nicked fisheries, but when we're not quite
in the same league as the med or the Caribbean, or Hawaii or some
parts of South Asia. The professhermen in the Caribbean referred to the North Atlantic
as a dead grace fishing area compared to what's available in the North Pacific and
in the Caribbean. It's it's they feel they've been graced with the law gods
with what's a bell to them here compared to what the perceived happens up north,
and if you take the cellular organisms all the way through to the actual
fish, I think you'll find that it's in quite a number of degrees more
in the warmer waters compared to the North Atlantic. Would you agree with that
mark or do you think that it's something else. Am I perceiving this wrong?
As the Caribbean abundant compared to the North Atlantic? Yeah? Yeah,
there's more species that are available to fish in those kind of regions. What
we're lucky to have in the northern whether that be New Zealand and Chile or
up in the North Atlantic, we have extremely high biomass single species which are
there which we can utilize and work with. But that's not to deny that
many of our bottom troll fisheries and others are very mixed and do take a
large range of species which should be celebrated. I'm still not going away completely
in my view, because I yes, I've been in the Mediterranean and countries
like that, but maybe what I think more you'll see local fishing close and
sure, and they're getting very small fish for their buya bases and sprats and
bokaro needs all that type of thing. But to get to get so many
mature species of different species fully mature. I don't often see that many places
well in the med The challenge there is they're fishing too hard and not letting
those fish get mature. If they were unfished, you would get much better
yields and much more mature fish there. So I don't think that's an indication
of ecological or biolog difference, but it's an indication that the fishing pressure is
too high and that results in this this paucity of larger, more mature fish.
I think because those small fish have to come from somewhere, so there
have to be some mature fish there. Mark going on to the proposal for
cod, your ices are suggesting a seventeen percent reduction, and I think it's
the North Sea and the concern with a lot of fishermen. It's a sixty
percent, sixty three percent increase last year, seventeen percent dropped this year.
They don't ever see that volatility, and the problem they felt last year was
sixty three percent. Sounds good, but it's a going from such a law
point as sixty eight percent of nothing. There's nothing type of thing and no
do it's what's your feelings on that well, the case of cod is quite
a challenging one for fishers, for the scientists and for the managers as well.
We have shown scientifically that in fact, the whole structure of how we
were addressing cod around the British Isles was incorrect, in that there was no
such thing as the North Sea cod stock and there was no such thing as
the West of Scotland stock. There're one stock that comes and goes, that
moves in between. So we went through a multi year I think it's over
four year process and that also involved a number of workshops with the fishing industry
in twenty twenty two, in twenty twenty three, working with Mike Park and
others to try and look at how the fisherman's information feeds into what was to
become the brand new stock assessment for what we're calling Northern Shelf cod. Now,
our problem is that we now have a brand new stock assessment and that
does result involvativity, and we also have a very fixed management system, and
our new stock assessment doesn't feed well into the existing management system because it existing
management system is still assuming that there's Western Scotland and there's still north Sea and
the Skagarat, Categat and the Southern English Channel Earned English Channel are not mixing,
and that gets rather tricky for us all when we try and look for
solutions. So I'm not going to in any way say that the advice for
less cod to be taken is in any way wrong from our point of view.
What we're struggling with is that the management system can't as yet find a
solution to deal with the new way that the evidence is coming through, and
it's very difficult. And this is a regular feature. We know that individuals
in different parts of different seas see dynamics which are different from the overall population
as a whole. And the Shetland cod is a really really good example.
Yes, there are large catches of cord around Shetland, but overall we're seeing
a real paucity of cod in other parts of an area where we think we
know the cod are mixing and integrating together. It would appear that northern quote
has been offset against southern quota. Is there any way you can see to
rectify the disparities between the management and what the fishing boats are actually experiencing.
That question is a question for the managers. I'm afraid and they need to
work with fishers and with scientists to find the solution. It's not the job
of ICs in any way to propose management, to propose management, or to
propose solutions that are not coming from the people impacted and affected and managed fishermen
our own Shedland feel it's not that very accurate as far as the quote is
concerned, because there's abundance of cord our own Shetland, and that there are
been cut because there's layers about the southern part. What about cut in the
separate in it so that there are quotas for different areas. This touches a
bit on the seasonality of this of the populations, because if you have cod
which are caught in one season in one area but moving around another and we
know that the cod populations are distinct at spawning time, but if you have
cod which are moving around to the other areas and being impacted by fisheries there,
then that does cause a challenge in terms of how do you manage it.
But I think you touch on a really important point that it's crucial that
management is effective and it works with the fishers and with the scientists and all
the other knowledge providers. To ensure that the management objectives are met. And
the management objectives are very clearly and I'm going to use that horrible phrase maximum
sustainable yield. So that is about maximizing catches. And if you have a
local problem in that you have a lot of fish, but it's in a
larger stock where we're saying that there aren't enough fish, You've got to find
management solutions. And that's where we need innovation, and that's where we need
communication and conversations between scientists, between fishes, between managers because as you said,
this currently is very very difficult, especially for those who see catch potential
catch that they can't utilize. Let me give you a cord mark from people
that were you mentioned earlier, make Park. So it obviously shuws there's a
breakdown in the between the managers and whatnot and yourselves in Northern Fishing Alliance.
As you know, it is concerning the Northern Fisher Alliance members that ICES has
appeared to adopt the role of managers, which is clearly not their function.
The role of ICES to provide advice rather than to determine management measures to reduce
the risk to stocks. Do you know what I think that statement I agree
with. It's not our job to be managers, it's our job to provide
the evidence and that indication. That statement shows that we have a problem,
and the problem is that we're not finding ways together to find a way to
exploit the stocks in the right way, particularly the cod. So we ran
the workshop with the with all the well not all, but representatives of codfishers
in twenty twenty two and twenty twenty three. We then took that information into
our new stock assessment approach and then, unfortunately, we found that it was
very difficult to apply that information into the current system. And the current system
is based on a framework that we have agreed with managers overall, whether that
be the UK or Norway or the EU, and that's our framework, and
we work very hard to try and adapt to this framework that we have published
and all of the people that pay for our advice agree to. And yet
we've ended up in the situation where there are some people rightly complaining that they
cannot utilize catch they see because the stock is considered much broader than those local
areas. Now that was quite a waffly answer, but it is about having
flexibility in management somehow to deal with the knowledge and also the expectations of the
industry. Do you feel that with what connection you've heard recently and going on
to the cod Sympausium, do you feel that that's been a success. Well,
certainly, the goodwill and the conversation that led to what we call the
Northern Shelf Cod Benchmark process we view as a success because we we found it
extremely useful to take the information from the fish industry and also to hear their
experiences and bring that together with the quantitative science that we're doing as well.
What isn't a success is the way in which our advice is then used in
the system, which is so constraining, and that's the real challenge. I
think, where do we go? What's that? How do we take that
forward? You have to take that forward by having a dialogue with the managers,
the fishers and the scientists. And unfortunately it's complicated because you've got Norway,
you've got the UK, and you've got the EU now all with fishing
nation rights, all of them trying to ensure that their fishermen get the maximum
that they can based on their national positions. So they come in with a
negotiation stant that we cannot in any way lose catch for our fishers. So
it's already setting up a combative environment. But the only way to move forward
is to say, we need to address how to manage considering that this is
now considered a large stock, how do we manage it best in terms of
the objectives, the international objectives of MSY and the precautionary approach. We recently
spoke with doctor Michael Kaiser from Harriet Watt University and we got into the complexities
of you basing your findings on scientific data and then been asked to build in
the anecdotal experiences of fishermen. He suggested that the development of visual technologies cameras
on every boat, above the nets and the holdrooms, might decrease that distance
between anecdo fishermen experience and scientific How do you foresee the application of technology help
in the situation? I think technology will create more data. Yeah, that's
perfectly fine. But what technology doesn't do is bring together the experiences of each
individual fisher. If someone is in one place and sees and feels and remembers
something in the past that isn't picked up by technology. So improving the databases,
improving the amount of data flowing into those helps all of us in terms
of the quantitative science. But what that doesn't do is help deal with the
values, with the experiences and the feelings of people, and sometimes we get
the science wrong. I'm going to give you a couple of examples. A
good one is mackerel in the Northeast Atlantic. Ices continued with the store assessment
approach a number of years ago, where the industry as a whole shouted,
you're wrong, we are seeing more fish than you claim, and we said,
no, the numbers say this, and they shouted louder and around it,
and we ran a workshop in twenty nineteen which charted a way forward to
bring in more information and more of the understanding of the system as a whole,
and we did change the macro stock assessment in response to that. And
those kind of things can't be dealt with by technology alone. You've got to
work with the fishes. Another really good one is Blue Whiting, where back
in the nineteen nineties Icy said Blue Whiting is going to collapse, it can't
cope with this level of catch, and yet the catch is kept coming and
the stock didn't collapse, and in fact, it was years later we realized
that there's this dynamic change with the ecosystem which impacts blue whiting, and so
we were thinking that everything was stationary across the whole type series, but in
fact the productivity was changing over time. And once we listened to people who
said there's still blue writing out there, a lot of blue whiting, we
realized that in fact our projections of what was going to happen was considering it
was lowly in a low production state, and in fact it was in a
high production state. So new technology helps, new data helps, but we
need to find a way to bring together the quantitative scientific understanding from the likes
of people like me and my organization, with the experiences and the stories and
narratives, and I mean stories in a powerful way, not a diminutive way,
to bring that together to ensure sustainable fisheries. You use the words feel,
experience, and remember now orthodox science doesn't really have categories for feelings,
but you seem to be quite focused on building in the fisherman's feelings. The
question is, how on earth do you start doing that? Where would you
even start? I use those words on purpose, and I knew you would
react. I think it's important that we understand that we manage fisheries and fisheries
are people and those people every person has something of value to add to the
system. And I sees has taken despite being labeled the way we are with
our databases and our conservative methods and our obsession with quantitative mathematics, which is
the underli like that has helped us bring down phishing effort and increase catches around
the North Atlantic hugely. But we can do better, And you asked about
method and recently we've had two big workshops, one with Natalie Stein's chairing and
beataborgstat In from Norway in the Netherlands, and this was on developing guidance were
ensuring integrity of scientific information submitted to Icy's and they looked at how do we
ensure that when we start broadening the sources of our information and data that we
ensure that it stays it maintains integrity. And then the second workshop we had
just a few months ago was run by Steve Mackinson from the Northern Polgic oh
no that's the wrong group from the Plagic Association in Scotland and Neil's Hintson who
works now for the PFA and that was a workshop on accounting for fishers and
other stakeholders' perceptions in the dynamics of fish stocks, and those two workshops together
are part of our initial state as I sees in trying to develop those methods.
I think it's better that if you want to learn about some of the
methods, perhaps you should speak to Steve or to Nils. But it's certainly
important, and me as chair of the Advisory Committee, I have pushed really
hard for this, particularly with the likes of some of the acts. And
I know the UK now isn't part of the ACT system, but many of
the acts the advisory councils are saying, look, we're seeing different things or
we're seeing the same things. I mean. Famously, we had the North
Sea Survey that went on for quite a while, which began I think in
the early two thousands and went through to I think about twenty ten, and
there we found the signals from fishers were broadly the same as the signals in
the data that the scientists were collecting. Wonderful. I need to ask you
to do something editorially here. You guys have talked about two people now who
we don't have any context for I'd just like you to quickly answer these two
questions Mark from my edit. First of all, could you tell me who
Mike Park is please? Mike Park is the head of the Scottish Whitefish Producers
organization based mostly in Scotland. You mentioned Natalie Steins, who's Natalie Stein's.
Natalie Stein's is a senior researcher at the Dutch Fisheries Institute, which is now
part of Wachninger Marine Research. And forgive me for saying it as Vasheninger.
You would say it as Wagainingen, but I'm Dutch and so I put the
little twang in there. But she specializes in human dimension in fisheries and is
in fact just now has been elected the chair of the Steering Group on Human
dimension in ices. I'm so glad I asked you that because we're getting an
A with our Friend episode, You're really should It's fantastic, Mark. I
would like to ask your views on whether they're in tune. We are a
lot of the fishermen here for as a conservation where they're closed the areas we've
it's almost like history is shown as from the past. To know an idea
that's not been feshed, nobody ever gets fished in it. Again, the
issue of closed areas is a very interesting one because all of the governments have
made commitments now to have thirty percent closed or protected by twenty thirty and ten
percent to be highly protected. Now, the evidence comes and goes as to
the effect ofness of those measures in terms of increasing fish productivity, and it
really does depend on the size of those closures. I know you've had Ray
Hillbourne on your podcast series, and Ray has some quite clear views and statements.
And there are also many people who go to the other extreme, which
say any closed area will give a fishery huge value, but that doesn't necessarily
mean that will happen. We're seeing also, and I'm going to broaden it
from the mane protected area issue to the wind farms. I mean, I'm
set up hearing people saying wind farms are good for fish, and I'm saying,
well, fish aggregate around them, it doesn't mean the productivity is increasing.
The jury, in my mind is still out as to whether wind farms
result in greater opportunity for fishing for others beyond those areas from which they've been
excluded. And we need a lot more study, and are not more understanding
of the areas, of the dynamics of closed areas in relation to fish production
and the opportunities to have a sustainable fishery around them. So that's a really
fuzzy answer, but I really think the jury is out for the sake of
the audience. My father's question to you this proposition was that when you close
a freshing area, fisher never caught again. As an outsider looking in,
I would make the assumption that by closing a fish area you would be creating
an environment with unintruded breeding and you would see an amplification in stocks. Can
you explain why that doesn't occur? Well, it might occur, but it
depends on the size of the area closed. I know you mentioned Mike Kaiser
already, but the experience around the Isle of Man, where I also was
based for three years, is that the closed areas for scollops help you know.
And we see that we have the the whole issue of Norway pout in
the North Sea. We have the sprat boxes, we have some of the
others. We we also see the quite poor example of the place box in
the southern North Sea, where we had a closed area where actually over time
the place moved out of it, so there's almost no discernible benefit from the
place box. And I'm going to get attacked for saying there's no discernible benefit
from the placebox. But the place moved out they as the waters warned the
place the place box was too shallow and too warm, and the place moved
out of it, so there was no protection. And yet that area,
as you said, remains closed. You're seeing they found a better place.
Oh dear, oh dear, would you would would you agree? Mark that
the wind sock is exact same? What's the wind sock? The wind sock
sorry, the wind sox audios area that was closed for it must be fourteen
or fifteen years. And the way sed shedland. Oh that I don't know
the details of that one. I'm afraid, Jim So. Another example which
is less applicable in the UK at the moment, but is the EU is
the big ferrari about the vulnerable marine ecosystems, the VMEs which have been introduced
by the European Union and lots of organizations are saying that the evidence base is
iffy, but the knowledge of the impact of phishing on those vulnerable marine ecosystems
is quite strong. So there's a there's a degree of what is what is
the purpose and what is the evidence base required to close an area, And
that's that's a tricky one, very tricky. The area I was coming at
with my question to you, it's just my past. I'm originally born and
brought up in a fishing village called Helmstale. It's on the Murray Firth,
which is the east coast of Scotland, and that relatively small firth or small
sea area. If you went down one coast and up the other wick Leibster,
Helmsdale and then go along the south coast which is Burghead, Hopeman,
lossy Mouth, mac Duff, but bamf right out the Fraser. But as
a child, I'm going up until the seventies and that there would have been
hundreds of boats fishing out of all that harbors every day and now there's not
one boat and anybody that does go in and try it never gets a fish.
I think there's there's a there's a there's an issue that we need to
be aware of that a lot of these closed areas need to be need.
Two things you need really clear management objectives as to why they're closed, and
sometimes that's lacking. And also you need some if you have closed an area,
you need to have some monitoring to understand what the impact and implications of
that closure has been. And that again is a really weak area in terms
of the evidence base coming through. And we have so many closed areas which
are put in to parently help, and yet there's no money spent. There's
no understanding either on the ecology that's happened, that's changed after the areas are
closed, or how it's impacted people. And what I think I would say
to you, Jim, is you can't just close an air without realizing that
you need to keep monitoring and understanding the repercussions of that closure. So I'm
agreeing with you. If you don't have the evident space, we can't comment
on what's happening and why people are. You see the concern with a lot
of fishermen, even going back to brush on the cut in the cod coda
and take it forward with to talk about some of the government measures, as
you rightly say about wind farms, marine protected areas, highly protected mean protected
areas. The concern for the fishermen at this end is the serious concern about
their viability. So it's not just a case of greed and try to catch
more. There is serious, serious concern about the viability of the Scottish fleet.
I agree with you, I completely agree with you. The the the
the forcing out and they use the word forcing because there is the objective,
the high political objective for renewable energy, there is the biodiversity objective as well.
All of those do challenge the people who are making their livelihoods from the
sea, and that is a real political challenge for people. And in the
same way that we always lose out, or I say we those of us
who work in fisheries overall, we were always trumped by oil and gas.
They always had, they always came top, and now we're always going to
be trumped by wind. There's it's very difficult and people are being having their
voices taken away. That's my personal opinion. By the way, I'm not
speaking for ices at all by saying that, well, I one hundred percent
agree were there and even in our small area, which I don't expect you
to know the names of the grounds they marked. But if we go to
the east side of the county and living in Caithness, we have what is
called the Beatrice oil field, and now there is covered in wind farms.
That was that in a fisherman's term in the past, that was a smith
bank, one of the most prolific fishing areas in the east coast of Scotland.
Now there's a proposed wind farm farms on the north of the county,
north of Caithness. In a fisherman's world, that is a stormy bank.
And so there with this for all the size of the sea is away.
A fisherman looks at it. Why why can and put your wind farms right
on our gardens or fishing roads. I'll give you another example, a bit
bigger dogger bank, very prolific fishing ground is about to be covered or in
the process of becoming a wind farm. Do you feel that this situation is
because of the four year electoral system where people are making investments based on their
four year stint, not on the next fifty years of what's best for fisheries
and wind farms. Is it restricted by that political system. I'm speaking now
not as a stock assessor. I'm speaking to someone who's observing the fisheries system
and the annual round of negotiations is actually the biggest driver in terms of fisheries,
and that takes all the attention, and it's almost impossible to get the
attention of a fisheries manager in Northern Europe. Between September to December. They're
gone. You've lost them, so you can't have any conversation with them because
they're busy doing the annual rounds of fisheries negotiations, so of course there's no
voice for them. For some of the year they are away at their own
tables, busy negotiating quotas. So I'm not sure if it's the electoral system
or what, but somehow the voice of the people impacted by decisions of how
to manage the sea and manage the space of the sea is not coming through
if you prioritize their livelihoods and their communities and their culture. If, however,
you want to prioritize renewable energy and wind, then you're not going to
listen to their voice anyway, A very valid point. Can I go forward?
Mark? And another real concern for fishermen, genuine concern for Scottish fishermen
just now, which I'm sure you'll be probably aware of is the amount of
unrecorded and regulated and monitored fish that has been caught by let's say non UK
boats and there isn't there's no monitoring when they're landing, they're not boarded,
and see there is there is completely out of control and fishermen, Scottish fishermen
under the tight rein and looking at losing cord again next year. This is
all happening in there around their their fishing grounds and it's we're seeing it with
our own eyes as they're landing in in our in our market, and the
other part of us as well as annoyance for our fisherman is oh, well,
what can an impact is that going to have in your figures? If
they're not if you're not getting them the figures, Well, I can't I'm
going to disappoint you. I can't really comment on that because we don't have
evidence of that coming through and the observers that we have monitor catches from and
the only boats that are allowed to fish in the waters are the spoats that
have traditionally done so, for instance with the non European boats are certainly not
allowed to be brought in to European waters and UK waters unless there's further agreement
with coastal states. So I can't really comment further on that. I do
think we have to be very careful though, and I'm going to point a
finger here. It's very easy to say other people are doing it, but
we don't have to have long term memories to remember the mackerel situation through the
nineteen nineties and two thousands, when we had extra pipes and new keys brought
in for secret shipping of mackerel from Scottish boats. And I know those Scottish
fishermen who were doing it, and they hold their hands up and say,
yes, we did, and some of them were prosecuted. We know that.
So we have to be very careful when pointing fingers because it's not always
the other side. All of us have some degree of challenge. But I
can't comment on current behavior because we don't have evidence for that. Sorry.
Accepting that historically Scottish fishermen were upt all sorts of nonsense, but also accepting
that there are a lot of Portuguese, French and Spanish boats landing in Shetland
in the North of Scotland unmonitored, you would never see these figures coming through.
There's no track record or logbook for illegal landings. And this is what
I think Jim was getting at. Oceano reported four months ago that they expect
the figure to be as high as forty percent. Even if that figure's doubled.
They're suspecting forty percent of the fish stocks in the North Atlantic are being
caught and landed illegally. Is there a number that you put into your calculations
to account for it or it does it not even come into your reckoning our
estimates And I can't comment on the specifics. I can't comment on who is
landing were in Shetland of dony Goal or wherever, or Newlyn. But the
issue is that where we have evidence of differences between the official catch and the
actual catch, then we do our best to incorporate those bits of information into
it. I started my career in Belfast in the nineteen nineties and we went
down to the auctions three week and we counted the number of boxes and then
we looked at what was reported and we readjusted the catch to account. Now,
as scientists we got into trouble, and you can imagine in Northern Island
it got a little bit ticy, but we gave estimates that were different from
the official catches, and that happens across the ISIS system. We have different
countries of different ways to bring that together. Now. I can't talk about
the specifics of what's happening now in different places, but we try our best
to get the right levels of catch to come through in the data flow.
I feel that thoroughly answers that you asked their Jim and me too. I
was expecting a different answer because there are enormous fishing groups of boats sometimes include
you know, hundreds of them on forums and social media, and there is
a virtual war going on in the sense that the acquisition has been made by
some of the Northern fishermen against the illegal landings. I mean, they're talking
about thousands upon thousands of tons of fish, not just a discrepancy in four
boxes of cord on a day boat. The only solution I can see is
to have twenty four hour monitoring on every port of a boat lands it's catch
is monitored, and I can't accept the fact that it's too costly to do
that when we're talking about correct fish assessment for our generational sustainability I'm not going
to comment on specifics of what is being claimed at the moment because we don't
have evidence. We don't anyway, But what I would say is just in
the last month, the European Union has passed new legislation in terms of the
control and enforcement and the greater use of ams for small boats as well for
electronic monitoring on big boats and all of that coming through. So and I
know that Scotland is bringing in some extremely tough electronic monitoring requirements of boats that
come into Scottish waters. So there are mechanisms and initiatives coming forward. But
yeah, we actually asked the question incorrectly because we should have asked you what
solutions are in the offing to address that problem, rather than what the problem
is. So this is really encouraging that the Scottish government, you do come
under quite a lot flak from the fishing industry, are actually making steps towards
monitoring all landings or getting as close to that as they can for all boats
landinggains Scottish waters with that include foreign landings. Yeah, my understanding is for
certain for access rights to Scottish waters, there's a number of regulations that are
coming in that will require certain certain other mechanisms to be there, and I
can't remember the details, but I understand that some of that is electronic monitoring
and other element Yes, it'll be interesting to see what happens because they've already
the Scottish government already have the Marine in Scotland in place and their officers monitor
local boats that never never monitor the foreign boats. But also there's an extra
complication because a lot of them when I class them to start with as non
UK, it's because quite a lot of them are have got the British flag.
They're registered in this country, but they're not owned or crewed by this
country. Well that's that's that's that's not a question for me chair of the
Advisory Committee, but that's a management question for people in Edinburgh and London.
Yeah, no, Mark, I know, I totally appreciate that and respect
what you're saying. What I and I wasn't trying to pin anything and you
what I meant and dead ask was how how can that impact on the figures
that you do work with? Well, as I said, we try our
best to estimate the actual catch coming through and we are not naive to the
situation that official figures may be slightly different in certain circumstances, and the scientists
across the whole Icis region actually have different mechanisms in different countries. To try
and address those differences. On your on your assessments, Mark, do you
what's your view when you say the different things that you're looking at? What's
your views on mesh size? And do you believe in which some scientists speak
the dawn predator stalks and non predator stock. I've heard you comment on this
in previous podcasts, and I find the concept a little difficult. Jim,
I'm sorry, because all fish are predators. Every fish is a predator.
A herring is a predator. A herring is like a zebra that eats lion
cubs because cod eggs are in the water and cod larvae and they're all eaten
by other fish planktibles. Cod themselves are cannibalistic, and we include that in
our models, particularly in the in the northern CODs around Spoalbart, etc.
We have specific models that work on the basis that cod eat themselves. So
the concept of a predator stock and a non predator stock, I think doesn't
capture the real confusion that happens out in our oceans. Were used to thinking
terrestrially of shape and cows and wolves, et cetera. Doesn't happen that way
in the ocean. Everything eats everything at different life stages. Yeah, but
yeah, we have a hag in our head and haka huge and big teeth,
and then we have a basking shark. A basking shark is eating,
in fact, more fish at earlier life stages than a hare. This is
fascinating, Mark, because we have heard this proposition of a predatorial hierarchy.
But I do I've always suspected that we're projecting terrestrial values into the ocean because
the way I've been brought up is there are two apex predators, the orca
and the Great White shark, whereby nothing lives on the Great White shark and
nothing lives on the orca, but they do kill each other. I find
that a great refreshing answer, because the next person we have on that talks
about this predatorial hierarchy, we get to pop back to them. I think
it's very I think I think that's a great as an answer. What's your
thoughts there, Jim, that there is no predatorial hierarchy. I respect,
and that's why I asked the question, and I i've had you know,
obviously everybody has different views, and I think it's in a previous podcast.
I remember asking you on Christians and from Iceland and he was doing some surveys
in the North Sea and it was mentioned to him about waiting. But he
gutted some whiting and not one, not one of whiting that they got it
had any immature fishing. It's a good I have the beginning of my career
in the Irish Sea worked on fish survey, specializing a lot in stomach sampling.
We would find whiting with juvenile whiting inside them, and in fact we
would often find a whiting with a whiting with a whiting inside them, so
that's very clear. And cord just the same. And yeah, the only
one which was always different was of course haddock because they they specialized in a
very different food type. If we're talking about those gadalis, have you found
any bizarre artifacts or items inside I haven't. I'm afraid I've just found rubbish
and fish. There's a fisherman in Wick, I think it's a by Andre.
He was on board and they gotted a cord fully mature cord and there
was an empty cork con in the stomach. Was there really now? Was
it diet cork or was it just regular cork? It wasn't at the turning
cord. Okay, important question, indeed, Mark, if you're you mentioned
it earlier, I just like to take it a wee bit forward. You
mentioned season seasonal is do seasonality comment your reckoning when you're doing your assessments.
Yes, And firstly, there are a number of stocks that we work with
where we do quarterly stock assessments, so good example being things like Sandel's or
the wipe out and there it's important because the productivity and they're so short lived.
Another seasonal issue, which does come into the stock assessments as a whole,
is actually where and when we then, so we're catching and we're looking
sorry, we're looking at the catch data, and we're looking at our own
surveys and also increasing the some surveys run by industry, and actually the time
of year of that survey will impact our assessment of the abundance in that survey
as well, and also if the seasonality is shifting, so we take those
into account. The other thing that we take into account in terms of seasonality
is things like the timing of where in the year that the fish spawn,
so classic being herring, which of course are spawning in the autumn. So
we try to estimate our biomass for north sea herring at the time of year,
which is generally the autumn, rather than the standard which is the beginning
of the year. So we take those into account in terms of seasonality.
But if I haven't addressed a seasonal issue that you think is what else is
there? The reason I ask is because it's been said to me just well
once recently. A cousin of mine he almost fifty year ago, and I
don't know which scientists, but they wanted to do a survey and go for
haddick. I can't remember the time of the year, but he said to
them, you'll not catch haddock just now, and they said, oh yeah,
we need to get our figures, we need to do it away they
went. And that was over certainly going on for forty or fifty year ago,
and only last year I heard it's almost the same thing from a Shetland
fisherman who's seemingly with herring, and they wanted to scientists wanted to do a
survey, and he said to them, you won't cut, you'll not get
any heading where you're going and what you want to do. You won't cutch
any hair in that says, oh, but we need to go Jim.
This is a very very important point. If you're going to build up a
time series of abundance through a survey, it's a relative time series, so
it's generally a very low abundance, but it thereies at that low level that
still is a time series that might be of value. But you've also touched
on the issue of what's appropriate gear to survey. And for instance, I'm
going to use an unusual example anchovy in the North Sea. We know that
anchovy are picked up a lot in bottom troll surveys done by the scientists every
year. However, when we do an acoustic survey of the North Sea,
we don't see anchovy. Now that we think is due to the fact that
the anchovy are coming in shore and spawning in a way at a time when
the acoustic survey is inappropriate. And yet in the Bay of Biscay, almost
all of our advice on anchovy is done using acoustic survey results because the timing
works very well. Now the North Sea Acoustic Survey is targeting herring and sprat,
so not getting anchovy is a problem. But actually our main priority is
hering and sprat biomass. So yes, seasonality matters, and it's all about
designing those surveys with the right gear and the right timing. But if you
have a long time series and enough catch, you will get a signal.
You mentioned anchovies, We don't not inndicate something of a the claim it.
Ah, we're back to the bluefin tuna question. We anchovy again, a
bit like bluthin tuna has come and gone in the North Sea and also in
the Skaggarat in Katagat, getting right round into the Baltic Sea, and it
is very definitely associated with warmer periods in those areas. And I've published a
load of papers when I was in the Netherlands on this subject. The anchovy
need a certain temperature to be able to overwinter in those regions. And the
other thing with things like anchovy is we've shown genetically that in fact it's a
local population that's going up and down. It's not a population from the Bay
of Biscay or the southwest coming through into the southern north Sea. But yeah,
absolutely, the ecosystem keeps changing going on. From TV's podcasts, one
of the things that fascinated me was I'm sure you'll make sense of it,
but that survey when you're on. Christiansen was in the North Sea. He
was doing the kutchin haddock, which as he clus called them like hering lick
size of hearing that was small from Anceland point of view, and he did
an age taste on them and they were between four and five year old,
and he said, if that fish was caught in Iceland it would have been
two kilos. Lots of things are changing in our system overall. A good
one is seeing how the maturity of whiting is declined. Let me get this
the right way around. They are becoming more mature, smaller, and so
things like that are happening in our system. Another one which I'm going to
take you way away from Scotland is in the Baltic. Baltic Sea cod is
in real trouble because of the state of the Baltic and we now have fish
that are so small and so skinny they're not fit for markets anymore. And
yet they're probably two three, four years old. And if this was twenty
years ago they would be healthy, big fish ready for market fulfility. But
they're not anymore. And it's a real concern that in some areas this is
happening and it's only some species. And for instance, Place is doing very
well in the nausea and the size of maturity. Isn't that changing? How
on Earth can a fish that's so skinny sustain spawn? How can that fish
sustain young or is that the thread that actually is one of the challenges.
We do see that they are these cod are also maturing younger and also giving
off eggs, and there are new year classes coming in. But your question
is are they healthy year classes? This is a self perpetuating things. We
don't know what's happening in the Baltic. Well, we kind of know.
There's a mixture of eutrophication, the nutrients too high and the oxygen is running
out. We have parasites in the Baltic which are affecting the cod coming a
lot from the seals. There's a whole host of things which are impacting the
size of the fish there. But it's one of the most outrageous, outrageous
the onward clear documented systems in decline and it really and the hellcom the environmental
organization there, the governmental organization has just published a report on the poor state
of the sea there and it has really impacted the fishing industry. And if
you speak to Polish or Latvian fishermen, they really are struggling. Mark I
can think that Stad further. We see that sometimes and it's really interesting.
Good ask you can you explain it? Just certain smaller idiots rowned over shores
were they'll catch fish. And the way we put it, it'll be in
just see this time a year October, anything between September October November, where
we would be looking at our fate, our fish in absolute prebo condition,
and we'll see some huddache and stuff which you would almost swear was in it
was March and April when they had just spawned and the odor completely oda condition.
What course is that, I don't know, But we make these assumptions
that they all spawn at the same time, in the same place, in
the same way. That may not be the case. There might be these
odd one or two I mean a classic is in heering. We see this
dynamic between spring spawning and autumn spawning, and this change is over decades and
across all of the areas, there is flexibility and change. But what why
particular fish is in a bad state? Could be the environment, could be
parasites, could be port feeding you as a host of things. Well,
i'd just like this on behalf of the Seafood Matters podcast. I would just
like to say I must have thank you Mark. I really enjoyed, genuinely
enjoyed speaking with you, and thank you. Jim has been very great talking
to you all and very similar, funny enough to what I felt with Michael
Kaiser and the previous podcast. Was the resounding message I'm getting ringing in my
ears, is that the importance and industry and scientists speaking together, and it's
that we're getting that message coming through from all sides. Thank you very much.
Yeah, it's crucial, crucial the battle