The eleventh Holland Fisheries Event took place in Urk last week, opening on Friday and continuing into Saturday, bringing around 2000 visitors, mainly from Belgium and the Netherlands, to De Koningshof in Urk.
‘HFE provided a platform and showed the resilience of the sector. And perhaps it gave those vessel owners who signed up for decommissioning a reason to reconsider,’ said Klaas-Jelle Koffeman, chairman of Stichting Visserijdagen Urk, who also acted as host on the exhibition floor.
‘We are in a completely different situation now than in 2018, when the last fair was. It’s important to look at opportunities and focus on those fishermen who are going forward. Young people participated in the maritime hackathon and dared to think out of the box. They deserve a chance. They are the future,’ he said.
A number of seminars were held during both days of the fair. Nathalie Steins of Wageningen Marine Research spoke on behalf of knowledge platform for Dutch sea fisheries Vistikhetmaar and the fisheries research platform OSW, about flyshooting and lobster fisheries in relation to sampling projects in co-operation with the Good Fish Foundation. Pedro Rappé presented the DBMatic data system, which collects online information in, on, around and under vessels, on behalf of De Boer Marine.
On Saturday morning he winner of the Maritime Hackathon was announced. The challenges involved 72 participants from Dutch and Belgian fisheries schools, the industry and NGOs. Most teams had thrown themselves into inventing a new ship for the future. The unmanned satellite ships as a solution for fishing in the future won. This was devised by the fisheries students of Thomas Koffeman’s team, consisting of Harm de Boer, Kevin Visser, Thomas Koffeman and Maarten van Slooten.
‘I hope that with this fair we will return to the new normal of seeing and exploring opportunities,’ said councillor Nathanaël Middelkoop in his welcome speech to the invited guests and exhibitors, during which he stressed that the Holland Fisheries Event is all about innovation in technology.
‘When fishing was in dire straits, the pulse trawl offered perspective after years of innovation. The Sustainable Fisheries Master Plan project is another such bright spot in times when fishing has been struggling,’ he said.
‘Innovation is not a magic wand that will make all challenges disappear. But it is the best thing we can try together right now.’
