Deep-water fisheries are relatively new but they have had a significant impact, with commercial species harvested ‘outside safe biological limits’ and some species regarded as critically endangered. The long term future of these fisheries, and the communities that depend on them for economic and social stability, looks bleak.

An ‘ecosystem approach’ to fisheries management has been called for globally, but how do you do it? Modelling predator-prey-environmental-fisheries interactions is one way. By constructing a foodweb model, with fisheries as top predator one can identify the impacts of changes in fishing effort or catch on other species.

One technique used for modelling multiple species fisheries (Ecopath with Ecosim) has been employed on the oldest deepwater fishery in the world: the Rockall Trough, which is one of the most well studied deep-sea regions in the world with datasets starting prior to the fishery.

Best estimates of the changes that took place over the past 40 years in this foodweb show a declining trend in most species since the onset of fishing but newly lowered TACs should lead to recovery of some species, while others will need further intervention.

Mixed impacts in fisheries have caused many an unexpected result from brute force management, which we modelled here: The hypothetical removal of the blue whiting fishery from 2007 to 2020 will increase blue whiting in the model, impacting species that compete with them for food (roundnose grenadier), and benefiting those species that prey on blue whiting (blue ling).

This project has demonstrated that a more holistic approach can reveal more about the complex fisheries interactions that would not be apparent through more traditional approaches to fisheries management. Ecosystem modelling, while not the single answer to deep-water fisheries management, certainly needs to be included in the tool kit available to fisheries managers.

See report here.

Scottish Sea Angling Conservation Network Taggathon

On a wet and windy weekend over 100 anglers, including students and scientists from SAMS (the Scottish Association for Marine Science) and SNH (Scottish Natural Heritage), gathered on the shores of Loch Sunart and Etive to take part in ?Tagathon 2009? - a fun event with a serious purpose; to record numbers of all shark species caught during the event.

Thanks to the efforts of the anglers who took part from boats, kayaks and the shore, over 65 spurdog, common skate and thornback rays were conventionally tagged whilst a number of data storage tags were also deployed in order to gain some more comprehensive data of the spurdogs preferred habitat by recording depth and temperature.

Why the focus on common skate and spurdog ?
Their ancestors evolved over 400 million years ago and were once present all around the Scottish coastline; sadly both are now classed as critically endangered by the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature).

Why Loch?s Sunart and Etive?
Anecdotal evidence suggests the presence of a resident populations of the species which use the Lochs as breeding grounds for the species.

The Scottish Sea Angling Conservation Network (www.ssacn.org) through their Scottish Shark Tagging Programme (www.tagsharks.com) and tagging events such as Tagathon and Sharkatag are trying to provide essential data on which the Scottish government can act and establish conservation measures to ensure the survival of sharks, skates and rays in Scottish waters for now and the future.

Looking behind the labels

"It is a paradox that on any set of indices, fishing, although certainly not without its environmental consequences, has a much lower environmental impact than any other form of food production. It is important that this is understood not as an excuse for doing nothing but to introduce a sense of proportion into what has often been a one-sided debate".

This quotation is taken from a draft paper of the North Western Waters Regional Advisory Committee which will shortly be submitted to the European Commission, entitled "Advice on the Reform of the Common Fisheries Policy". Regardless of whether this comment can be justified or not, it flags an issue that I have heard raised over and over in conversations with fishing industry representatives and fishermen themselves - that they are now labelled by many as plunderers of the ocean, whereas previously they were seen, and appreciated, as providers of food. It is the attachment of labels to people and groups of people that interests me, and the reactions that such labelling provokes. For example, tarring the fishing industry with the brush of plunderer encourages the industry in turn to label the labellers as "anti-fishing". And from there, the debate can so easily spiral out of proportion, another point raised in the quotation above. The question is whether, and how, it is possible for the relevant parties to look behind the labels, those applied to them and those that they have applied to others, sometimes unwittingly.

The Reef Tank interview

Recently I was interviewed by the The Reef Tank, a great blog that covers many issues of relevance to marine science and conservation.

We discussed many issues concerning marine policy: governance reform in Scotland and the UK, ecolabelling in fisheries, the Arctic and the 'big questions' facing marine policy and governance.

An important point was the fact we need to get marine issues into the public consciousness - not just the usual suspects or those making a living from, or living in proximity to the sea.

For the interview and other posts covering diverse marine topics:

http://www.thereeftank.com/blog/

The obsession with measuring economic growth

Last month Nicolas Sarkozy breathed new life into the ongoing debate as to whether Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which measures financial growth, is an accurate measurement of a country's state of health, the argument being that GDP ignores other factors vital to the well-being of its population (http://www.theecologist.org/blogs_and_comments/bloggers/jonathon_porritt/325244/sarkozy_deserves_applause_for_his_stance_on_growth.html). Sarkozy endorsed the recommendations of a report he commissioned by Nobel prize-winners Joseph Stiglitz and Amartya Sen. The report criticises the use of GDP statistics as a measure of societal well-being, pointing out that GDP statistics were introduced to measure market economic activity and not well-being. Earlier this year, the UK Sustainable Development Commission's Report Prosperity Without Growth (which was not well received by the Treasury) took a similar line when it highlighted the fact that the current economic crisis provides an opportunity to consider economic models which are not predicated solely on economic/financial growth.

Nobel Prize in Economics 2009

I'm very pleased about the recent award of the Nobel Prize to Elinor Ostrom and Oliver Williamson. It was significant and celebratory that Ostrom was the first woman to win the prize, but also, from my perspective, it was significant that the prize was awarded due to research into the critical concept of governance.

Professor Ostrom, who teaches at Indiana University, was awarded the prize "for her analysis of economic governance." Her work had demonstrated how common property could be successfully managed by groups using it. In the 1960s, Hardin set the dominant framework by outlining how common property resources, using the example of a village 'community' green, would become degraded over time due to non existent, vague or competing pressures amongst reseource users who have an aim of profit or welfare maximisation. Hardins 'Tragedy of the Commons' outlined the fate of many common property resources that suffer from a lack of a regulatory regime - a case being the degradation of high seas fisheries. Ostrom's research outlined how this is not necessarily the case - that many examples exist of communities and resource users coming together in the absence of regulatory regimes to manage common property resources such as fresh water, fisheries and forests.

Governance is a critical concept that is relevant for natural resource management, climate change, and conservation. It deals with the relations between traditional government, civil society and market orientated actors, and looks at the role, evolution and effectivness of social institutions. Fundamentally governance is about inter-relations and interactions across differnet scales - local, national and international. In relation to natural resources, it relates to resolving conflicts, building collective responsibility and ultimately achieving sustainable and responsible management. As outlined in Ostrom's research, and evident in many areas such as community based resource management, co-management, and market based instruments - understanding the evolution, effectiveness and impacts of new forms of governance is important to resolving many environmental issues.

This award could not come at a better time.

The Tip of a Fast-disappearing Iceberg?: Implications of the opening up of the Northern Sea Route

In September 2009 two ice-strengthened heavy lift vessels of Germany’s Beluga Group – the MV Beluga Fraternity and the MV Beluga Foresight – successfully completed their transit through the Northern Sea Route, known in former times as the Northeast Passage. This event was excitedly billed (by Beluga) as a “world premier voyage” representing the first true commercial transit of this long-sought Arctic waterway. Are global shipping patterns set to be transformed as Arctic routes open up?

Beluga certainly seems to think so as it has announced plans for more (up to six) and larger vessels to use the same route in the summer of 2010. After all, the lure of using Arctic sea lanes is readily understood – using the Northern Sea Route represents a distance saving of almost 40 per cent on the a transit between northern Europe and northeast Asia as compared with the traditional routes using either the Suez or Panama canals. This translates to significant potential savings in terms of transit time and fuel costs (and therefore harmful emissions).

Shorter but better?
A slightly closer look at the pioneering voyages of the German ships does, however, suggest that global shipping patterns are unlikely to be transformed quite yet. In particular, it is noticeable that the two vessels concerned are relatively small being 12,750 dead-weight-ton (dwt) vessels. In contrast “Suezmax” class ships plying more traditional routes between Asia and Europe exceed 200,000dwt. This implies that the vessel the size of one of the Beluga ships would have to make at least 15 return transits of the Northern Sea Route in order to deliver the same volume of cargo as one voyage using a larger vessel by way of the Suez Canal – rather undermining the pure distance savings involved in using the Arctic route. Indeed, the size of vessels operating in the Northern Sea Route is limited by both draft (12.5m) and beam (30m) restrictions dictated by the shallow nature of some of the straits between the Siberian mainland and Arctic islands and the need to follow in the wake of icebreakers respectively.

The ships will comeWhile there are good reasons to conclude that Beluga’s first commercial transit of the Northern Sea Route will lead to a radical realignment in global shipping patterns in the short term, this is by no means the end of the story. As the Arctic region continues to warm and sea ice cover thins and retreats, the summer sailing season (currently around 6-8 weeks) will extend, passage will become more reliable and less prone to unpredictable delays while the significant potential savings involved in terms of transit time and distance will remain seductive. The passage of the Beluga vessels through the Northern Sea Route highlights the fact that navigation in the Arctic is very much on the increase and that interest in inter-oceanic transit routes via the Arctic is burgeoning. This, in turn, suggests that, despite considerable recent progress, greater efforts will be required on the part of the Arctic littoral states to manage and govern these developments and, in particular, enhance their surveillance, enforcement and search and rescue capabilities to protect and preserve the remote, environmentally fragile but increasingly used Arctic marine spaces involved.