The Invest in Fish Report

Invest in Fish South West is releasing its recommendations for the future of fisheries in the South West, on Friday 22nd June 2007.

If you have any queries regarding this report, would like a hard copy sent to you, please call 07771 954044.

The report is available in PDF format by clicking here. If you do not have Adobe Acrobat reader installed, you can download it, for free, from the Adobe website.

Project News

IiFSW is now in its consultation phase. Members of the IiF Steering Group and the project team are currently meeting with you, the stakeholders, to discuss the outcomes of the fisheries management options that have been run through the Invest in Fish bio-economic model and the assessment process. These include decommissioning, mesh size increases and effort control, and other ideas generated through extensive discussions over the last two years.

You can view a full list of all the options suggested by stakeholders by clicking here.

NEW

You can download and review many of the options the Invest in Fish model has assessed, by clicking on the highlighted option below. Each downloadable option has approximately 8 different slides, which shows what impact this option would have on key criteria, such as fish stocks, marine environment, angling, and port profits. An explanation of each graph is included, along with a feedback sheet to provide your comments back to us.

Please do take the time to complete this feedback for the options that interest you, and send the sheet with your thoughts (copy and paste from the document) back to us by email or post. Your views on whether this presents a credible option for managing SW fisheries will be taken into account. Of course, in reality there is much more to fisheries management than single ideas analysed through a model; yet, this exercise does provide a way to explore some interesting scenarios.

CAUTIONS: Within each download is a section outlining the assumptions or cautions for these modelled ideas. These are very important and highlight that the model is a tool, not a recreation of actual reality.

Please click on the option to download what the IiFSW model says about:

The model is able to combine some options, to see what cumulative effect multiple measures would have. Here are 2 scenarios:

A baseline is needed as a reference point to compare changes brought about by the ideas or options. To see the impact of an option we need to maintain something as a constant; this is the baseline. Various baselines are possible, depending on the assumptions built in. We provide an illustration of a generic baseline, as well as some alternate or modified baselines.

The modified baselines have had adjustments which may make them closer to actual reality (for example, building in the technological creep that happens in fishing over time, or building in various aspects of human behaviour). HOWEVER, none of the baselines – including these – are able to be accurate predictors of the future. The modified baselines offered here are:

(A) Optimised Effort of South West Fleet: a scenario with maximum fishing fleet effort.

(B) Zero Fishing Effort: no fishing, either commercial or recreational

(C) Natural Attrition: assuming fishing vessels will leave or shift areas when they are continually losing money

(D) Technical Creep: assuming technological creep of 2% happens to commercial fishing

(E) 20% Increase in Recruitment: fish recruitment is extremely difficult to predict. This considers what happens if it is better than what’s used in the generic baseline.

If you would like to know more about the consultation phase, the options being modelling, or any other aspect of the project, please contact Heather, Spike or Sylvette on the Invest in Fish team by email info@investinfishsw.org.uk or at the office on 01736 333 733.

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