Niels Hintzen takes over as the Pelagic Freezer-trawler Association’s (PFA) chief science officer as of 1st March next year, stepping into to succeed Martin Pastoors, who has led the PFA’s scientific work for the last nine years.
‘Our scientific work is the cornerstone of our fishing activities. Increasing and using scientific knowledge are essential for sustainable fishing,’ said PFA president Tim Heddema.
‘Together with our members, we will keep gathering data on pelagic stocks, which will then feed into our fishing operations and hopefully into fisheries science and management. We thank Martin Pastoors for his passionate efforts throughout the years and we look forward to building on those achievements with Niels Hintzen.’
With a background as a fisheries researcher for Wageningen Marine Research (WMR) for sixteen years, Niels Hintzen’s specialisations included statistical analyses to simulate future fisheries management scenarios. He played an important role in international groups of scientists assessing the herring stocks in Europe and the jack mackerel stock in the South Pacific.
Martin Pastoors joined the PFA in 2014 and has successfully driven the expansion of its science and research programme, including self-sampling, experiments with underwater cameras and automatic weighing and measuring systems.
He has always emphasised the importance of close co-operation with the crews at sea because they are the ‘eyes and ears at sea.’
Having been instrumental in promoting the role of industry data in science and management, Martin Pastoors will remain involved with the wider (pelagic) fishing sector through his own consultancy business.
