Examination of Witness (Questions 180-199)
Mr Barrie Deas
19 MARCH 2008
Q180 Viscount Ullswater: Yet what
you are saying is that it should be much more flexible in the
long-term management plan; you have a basis of quota allocation
and yet you can operate within a more flexible arrangement of
quota, or does quota have to be absolutely distinct for each Member
States, each fishery or whatever it is?
Mr Deas: There are different levels of question
there. I was making the assumption that we would continue with
the principle of relative stability and the level of TAC would
continue to be set on a broader level, but in terms of how you
take that quota and the instrument you use—we are talking
here about the technical conservation regulation, effort control,
how you meet environmental objects, that is the kind of item that
could be included in annual or bi-annual or tri-annual operational
plans.
Q181 Viscount Ullswater: Can I just
continue with this a little bit? Are you suggesting that there
will be no need for an annual Council meeting in December to decide
on TACs year after year, that somehow TACs will evolve in a sustainable
way that does not need this precise decision-taking? Do your long-term
management plans include the flexible quota system according to
the science and according to the monitoring of the fish caught,
according to the selectivity of the fisheries and how competent
the fishermen are at delivering the sort of fishery management
that you are talking about?
Mr Deas: With the exception of a few short-lived
species the fact that we have annual quotas and the science cycle
works on an annual basis is entirely superfluous. There is a huge
amount of effort involved in turning the wheel every year to churn
out these figures, and bear in mind that 50% of the stocks that
we are talking about here ICES consider the level of data insufficient
to call them analytical TACs. That is a large number and of even
those that are analytical, there are quite a number of those that
we would have concerns about, and we can perhaps talk about the
science a little later. It would be much more preferable to just
concentrate on a particular stock or group of stocks in mixed
fisheries: where are we now, where do we want to be and how do
we get there in an incremental, phased, way, and then the plans
would be matched to that. There are different levels that we are
talking about here but apart from a few stocks I do not see the
need to have annual TACs. With the nephrops stocks, for example,
we are already on a two-year cycle and that principle could be
developed.
Q182 Baroness Jones of Whitchurch:
What proportion of the fish that are caught come from mixed stocks
roughly—is it 20% or 80%?
Mr Deas: With white fish stocks you would have
to say the majority, the vast majority, there are very few pure
white fish fisheries. With the pelagic species of herring and
mackerel, which in tonnage terms is very large, that is much more
of a single species. As you move up to the North, North Norway
Barents Sea cod, that becomes a much cleaner fishery, but down
where we are the demersal stocks are highly mixed. Nearly all
the time when we are talking about demersal stocks we are talking
about very mixed fisheries to some degree or other.
Q183 Viscount Ullswater: Perhaps
I should just round off the economics side and ask you whether
you feel that there is a role for the rights-based approach to
fisheries management?
Mr Deas: Yes. In the UK we have gone quite far
down that road already with fixed quota allocations and if a fisherman
wants to buy quota he can buy quota. There is an issue about legal
title and whether ultimately ownership resides with the Government
as a public resource, so there is a debate to be had about that
but actually we have gone quite far down the road of quota trading,
not in a particularly planned way, I think it developed inadvertently;
there were a number of changes to the management system and we
realised we had tradable quotas without anybody specifically arguing
that that is the direction we should go in. It is there, it plays
an important part and on the whole the industry, with the exception
of the under-ten sector, is content with the arrangements that
are there. There is certainly some need for fine-tuning, but after
the introduction of FQAs (fixed quota allocations) the amount
of grumbling about quotas and allocations evaporated because if
a fisherman wanted quota and he could afford it, he could buy
it.
Q184 Viscount Brookeborough: Just
before I turn to the scientific question you and other witnesses
have spoken about net technology if you like and the developments
in avoiding catching certain species. That has been spoken about
for years; has this technology advanced or why do we not have
better results when the actual fish species have not changed?
On a previous inquiry we were shown lots of new technology like
windows, different compartments where different fish might be
found and the net could open and let them out. What has been the
improvement (if any) over the last 15 years or why are we still
talking about letting the same species out of the net as we were
then?
Mr Deas: There has been development and I am
sure there will continue to be great improvements in selectivity.
The problem has been in providing the right kind of incentives
to encourage the uptake, and here there is a link between the
last question and this question which is why we have advocated
cod avoidance plans that would provide an exemption from the days
at sea regime. If you put forward a plan how you were going to
operate in the coming year that might include selective gear,
amongst other things. For example, there is a new net that has
been designed in the United States called "the Eliminator"—pause
for laughter—which eliminates cod in your catch. In the
past it has been relatively easy to release whiting and haddock
because when they go into a net they swim upwards and you have
a square mesh panel at the top and they escape. Cod is more awkward
because of their size, they have big bodies, and they react in
a net on the whole by swimming downwards. This net addresses that
particular behavioural pattern, so there are technical developments
there but in my opinion the full advantages of selective gear
have not been fulfilled to their optimum which is why I am very
keen to explore how you can put arrangements in place that encourage
their adoption and use. It is more of an economics and incentives
issue than a technical issue, the technical development will continue.
Q185 Viscount Brookeborough: Thank
you very much. We will now move on to scientific analysis and
you have already spoken just a little bit about it and we understand
that there is a great deal of uncertainty in the scientific analysis.
What is your opinion of the methodology and do you think they
can improve it without putting so much more money into it that
it is counterproductive on the fishery industry. Would you also
comment on the success or the progress of joint initiatives between
fishermen and scientists when we are led to believe that definitely
in years past they were streets apart and could not possibly agree
or get together; is there some progress on this?
Mr Deas: On the question of uncertainty there
is a joint recognition by the industry and the scientists that
there are large areas of uncertainty and there is a new commitment
to do something about that. Later this year we are to meet and
establish what are called data workshops that will begin to introduce
knowledge that is held by fishermen about the stocks in a systematic
way. Fishermen have always had opinions about the stocks, but
they have tended to be dismissed as anecdotal if not self-serving
sometimes, and the challenge is to find ways in which that information
can be captured and fed into the system to supplement the more
conventional methods based on official landing statistics and
surveys. Landing statistics as a pillar of the stock assessments
were corrupted to a very high degree by black fish and a very
destructive cycle evolved in which black fish led to poor information,
led to more stringent TACs, which led to economic pressures, more
black fish and more poor information and the whole cycle went
round. That should be improving now—the scientists tell
us that it is improving—but even granted that and also taking
into account that the science tends to be retrospective, tends
to be a couple of years out of date. Fishermen are experiencing
in real time what is happening to the stocks, all of that can
be fed in in a collaborative way if we can find the ways to do
it. A lot of this is about trust and confidence, so at the RAC
level both the North Sea RAC and the North West Waters RAC are
heavily involved in efforts to improve the quality of the assessments
of the stocks that they are involved in. One idea that has been
put forward and seems to be finding favour with ICES is a traffic
light system so that when ICES is fully confident with its assessment
then it gets a green light, if there are real problems there is
a red light and then something in between. That will help direct
us and our efforts to the stocks that really need to be addressed.
On the second part of your question about collaboration, there
was a big breakthrough just after 2002 when the Government agreed
with our suggestion that fisheries science partnerships should
be established where CEFAS and the industry jointly define a particular
problem, jointly gather the data and do the respective analysis.
That has been so successful that we now have a time series in
particular fisheries that are now being taken into account by
ICES. As a model it has been adopted elsewhere in the UK and in
Europe and it has transformed the relationships between fishermen
and scientists which had previously been restricted to an annual
very controversial meeting in the autumn when the scientists said
these are the results of our work over the year and your quotas
are going down. You can imagine the kind of reaction that that
gave, but this brings fishermen and scientists into collaboration
aboard the commercial fishing vessels; it is shared work and shared
results and there is a sense of ownership of those results throughout.
That is a model for many areas or fisheries where sworn enemies
can work together.
Q186 Viscount Brookeborough: Is that
one area where either side doubts the other's credibility because
they are simply not monitoring the same areas at any one time
because the scientists include not necessarily one fishery but
it could include one and a half other fisheries. We were told
by a witness earlier that the area the scientists operate in is
not the same as a single fishery and therefore when they do not
agree with each other they say well of course the statistics do
not really come out of the area that we are in?
Mr Deas: I can see the argument, which is that
ICES squares are at too broad a level and you need a lower level
resolution, and that is where fisheries science partnerships can
contribute, providing seasonal data and lower level resolution
data and feed that in to the process. Indeed, that is what some
of the time series impose and the fisheries science partnerships
do.
Q187 Chairman: Can we move on to
discards, and let us say that on discards there is recognition
that a total ban is never going to effectively happen and there
will always be a degree of discarding, that the Norwegian ban
is a pragmatic ban and most likely could not be applied in the
context of the United Kingdom. Taking the large margin of error
associated with fish stock prediction that the science comes up
with, there is at the moment a real problem of the fishermen putting
his net in, pulling out fish for which a TAC exists but he does
not have quota for and so that is discarded. That seems to be
the most offensive element of discard.
Mr Deas: Yes.
Q188 Chairman: How can we remove
that problem?
Mr Deas: I agree with your opening remarks and
the solution has to be fishery by fishery, but again I come back
to the idea—and this is an idea that has been advanced by
our Federation—of cod avoidance plans. Really what you are
talking about there is avoiding catching cod over and above your
legitimate quota because at present, as I explained earlier, the
incentive can be to go out, catch what you catch and then throw
overboard the lower grades in order to maximise your income. A
cod avoidance plan would be incentivised through an exemption
to days at sea, and that means money, because if you are a white
fish boat you can only be viable if you buy extra days so there
is a direct financial incentive. That could be in a variety of
ways, it could be using the Eliminator net that I described, for
example, more selective gear, or it could be through spatial avoidance,
in other words fishing in grounds where you know there is a high
probability that there is low cod, or it could be a whole mixture
throughout the year, it could be a mixture of those reasons. We
prepared a draft pilot cod avoidance plan for a particular vessel
out of Whitby. Over the year that vessel was involved in five
separate fisheries: it started fishing for whiting, it then moved
to the Norwegian sector targeting saithe and pollock, it then
moved to a nephrops fishery that had some cod by-catch and then
to a relatively clean nephrops fishery and finished the year targeting
haddock. It had about 100 tonnes of cod, partly pooled, partly
purchased, and the plan defined how that vessel would operate
to ensure that it did not catch more than its legitimate quota.
If, for example, when it was in the Norwegian sector it caught
more than the expected 11% of cod, then it would move to the next
fishery in its portfolio of catching opportunities earlier. Temporal,
spatial, gear adaptations were all part of that, and that is probably
quite a complicated one, you could have a fishery that was just
following the same kind of pattern throughout the year or maybe
a couple of fisheries winter and summer, but that gets the general
idea across. Probably the question that you are going to ask is
okay he has a plan but how do we know he is following his own
plan? There has to be an element of observer programme in that
and the vessel operators would be willing to accept that. An alternative
may be something like CCTV attached to the winch which is used
in some NFFO fisheries at the moment. CCTV applied by the state
smacks of big brother, but as a cheap alternative to having an
observer on board might be a bit more of an attractive option.
Q189 Chairman: It might close down
at critical periods though, might it not?
Mr Deas: We have to take all of these things
into account, but the same thing can be said about VMS, there
is nothing that is foolproof, you have to look at the balance
of these things.
Q190 Chairman: Is there a way though
if I bring up haddock and I have not got a quota for haddock but
there is haddock quota being held by either my PO or somebody
else's PO, is there a mechanism that means that either there or
then or once I have landed I buy quota to cover my catch?
Mr Deas: That happens.
Q191 Chairman: Is that happening
routinely?
Mr Deas: Yes. What you have got to remember
is that what you are talking about there are the quota rules but
then the catch composition rules, the technical conservation rules,
require you to have your catch composition in terms of the species
aboard right after 24 hours. If you have gone out and caught too
much whiting or too much cod or whatever in your first 24 hours,
you are then supposed to discard that and then go fishing for
it again later in the trip, there is an inherent madness about
that.
Chairman: We are all speechless.
Q192 Baroness Jones of Whitchurch:
Why do you not do what the Chairman was just talking about where
you agree what happens in those circumstances; why do they not
get on the phone or get on the radio and start trading?
Mr Deas: That is okay when you land, but if
you are boarded at sea and you have your catch composition wrong
you are prosecuted.
Q193 Baroness Jones of Whitchurch:
You can only do that trading when you land.
Mr Deas: Yes. If we were allowed to have our
catch compositions right just as we landed that would not be a
problem, but at the moment after 24 hours—the Navy can board
you and say your catch composition is wrong for the mesh size
that you are using. It is interesting that earlier this year in
Dublin there was a meeting on technical conservation and the Commission's
presentation was very illuminating because it was highly critical
of the current regulation and how we could have got in the position
where we are discarding to meet catch composition rules when Commissioner
Borg has got this initiative to reduce discarding. It is why,
I think, I have come around to the view that the idea of moving
away from highly prescriptive rules like that that create perverse
results as I have just described has to be one of our objectives.
Q194 Chairman: What is the rationale
for the 24-hour catch composition requirement?
Mr Deas: Instead of having legal and illegal
mesh sizes you could use any mesh size but then you would have
to have your catch composition to justify using that. That was
the rationale which we argued against at the time, but unsuccessfully.
Q195 Viscount Ullswater: In your
evidence you say "it should not be forgotten that 60% of
cod is caught as a by-catch". To us that is a terrible waste
of a very marketable fish, but is it a waste, is that what you
are saying?
Mr Deas: It is by-catch but it is not discarded.
You might be targeting haddock or saithe and small amounts are
caught across a whole range of fisheries; you just need to be
careful how you interpret that, it is not being discarded. Nevertheless,
the industry certainly talked about 40,000 tonnes of cod in the
North Sea being discarded; I do not know if that is the correct
figure but certainly that is what was being discussed last year
and that seems to be entirely counter-productive to a recovery
plan.
Q196 Lord Palmer: Would you be able
to give us the accurate figure?
Mr Deas: No.
Q197 Lord Palmer: Because you do
not know what has been discarded.
Mr Deas: It is hearsay.
Chairman: We weigh it before we discard it. Let us
go on to control and enforcement; Lord Palmer.
Q198 Lord Palmer: You were in the
audience when I asked Mr Armstrong this same question. "Black
fish" in the system seem to have been pushed right into the
margin and illegal fishing does not seem to have been a problem
since the year 2005. To what do you really ascribe this success
and what do you consider to be the key pillars of any revised
EU control and enforcement regime?
Mr Deas: I agree with Bertie Armstrong that
the buyers and sellers registration has produced a remarkable
turnaround and that is reflected in not only the rising price
of fish but the rising price of quota. The fact that the black
fish has been extinguished and therefore to cover legal landings
a vessel requires more quota and so that pushed the price up,
which is a very good indicator I think as well as the official
statistics. What should be the pillars of an EU control policy?
It is worth recalling the Net Benefits report—I do
not agree with everything in it but I thought on the whole it
was a quality document. The part of that document that I thought
was most illuminating was something called the fisheries management
jigsaw—it is a jigsaw because all the pieces interlink—and
it said that for a successful management policy you need capacity
broadly in line with resources, you need the fleet to be profitable,
the management needs to be based on good information, and that
includes fish stock assessments, and there needs to be a high
level of compliance because if there is not a high level of compliance
the system is broken. The Net Benefits report was talking
about the UK but you could equally apply those to the EU: you
are not going to get good compliance if you do not have capacity
broadly in line with resources, which is almost the same as saying
profitability. If there is a huge gulf in perceptions about the
stock you have compliance problems as well—if the fishermen
disagree profoundly with what the science is saying—and
all of those things come together and develop in a culture of
compliance where fishermen take responsibility for the resource
that they depend on. Again, it is a jigsaw because you cannot
have one of those in isolation, they all feed into each other
and are linked to each other.
Q199 Chairman: Let us just summarise
the business on structural policy. You say no to efforts and you
prefer capacity reduction; the question I suppose is, what is
the most effective way of managing capacity reduction? Straightforward
decommissioning is not a one-for-one relationship.
Mr Deas: No, it is not but then again neither
is effort control; you think you are doing one thing and the result
is something else. Decommissioning does work. It is not one-to-one
but the reduction in the English fleet from 1993 onwards and in
the Scottish fleet from 2001, when there was a substantial reduction
in capacity and effort—a 67% reduction in effort—in
the North Sea has been a major contributor to the reduction of
fishing mortality on cod and therefore a contribution to the recovery
of cod at sea. I do not think decommissioning is perfect, but
none of the instruments that we are talking about here are. I
would also add that to my knowledge the Irish have a white fish
decommissioning scheme in the pipeline; the Dutch have taken out
a significant number of their large beam trawlers through decommissioning;
there is a decommissioning scheme proposed in France as part of
this financial package; the Spanish have reduced the size of their
fleet through a fleet modernisation scheme—they have taken
a lot of capacity out but put new capacity in, which is a way
of doing it—the Danes were actually the first to undertake
major decommissioning, going well back before 1993, so it would
be entirely false to think that decommissioning has only taken
place in the UK, there have been substantial decommissioning schemes
elsewhere and I think that needs to be taken into account.
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