The MMO has published the results of the 2015 trials with 18 North Sea vessels fitted with Remote Electronic Monitoring (REM) devices to fish under a discard ban for cod in Area IV.
Additional quota was provided as part of this fully documented trial that had the aim of providing evidence and experience from the scheme in advance of the demersal landing obligation being phased in from 2016, investigating the potential of using market grading data for reference fleet monitoring, and better understanding the impact of the Catch Quota scheme and the landing obligation on the fishing industry.
Fishing operations on the participating vessels were monitored using audits of REM data and CCTV footage recorded at sea, while size grades of landed cod were also analysed as a way of providing indications of possible high-grading taking place.
The report considers the extent to which REM monitored vessels can be considered as representative of the wider fleet in that they are able to be used as a reference fleet.
The results show a significant variation spatially and temporally in the size distribution of cod catch by participant vessels and more recent analysis suggests significant spatial variance between participant and non-participant vessels. Such variance is likely to affect the level of confidence that can be drawn from monitoring a subset of vessels and therefore further analysis in this area is recommended.
Some of the trial participants have reported specific adaptations to avoid juvenile cod. These have included adding square mesh panels, increasing mesh size above legislative minimum requirements and behavioural adaptations.
The main behavioural adaption reported has been avoidance of areas with known high levels of undersize fish. Work is ongoing in 2016 to study spatial variance between participant and non-participant fleets. This work has the potential to provide evidence of the reported spatial avoidance by the FDF fleet.
It is considered that there is the potential for REM to provide a means of retrospective auditing of real-time, industry-reported data such as juvenile fish abundance. This could allow juvenile real time closures to be triggered accurately and in genuinely real time. In addition, REM can be used to generate spatial and temporal trends in length frequency data with potential for scientific use.
The full report can be found here.
