Discards
Discards are the portion of a catch of fish which is not retained on board during commercial fishing operations and is returned, often dead or dying, to the sea. The practice of discarding is driven by economic and political factors; fish which are discarded are often unmarketable species, individuals which are below minimum landing sizes and catches of species which fishers are not allowed to land, for instance due to quota restrictions. Discards form part of the bycatch of a fishing operation, although bycatch includes marketable species caught unintentionally. Discarding can be highly variable in time and space as a consequence of changing economic, sociological, environmental and biological factors.[1]
Discarding patterns are influenced by catch compositions, which in turn are determined by environmental factors, such as recruitment of small fish into the fishery, and social factors, such as quota regulation, choice of fishing gear and fishers' behaviour. There have been numerous studies on the scale of discarding. In the North Sea the total annual quantity of discards has been estimated at 800,000–950,000 tonnes,[2] or the equivalent of one-third of the total weight landed annually and one-tenth of the estimated total biomass of fish in the North Sea.[3]
Impacts
Discarding affects the environment in two ways; firstly, through increased mortality to target and non-target species,
Discard policies
The idea of banning discards is that since the fish that are discarded have a negligible chance of survival, it is better from a management perspective that they are included in the fishing induced mortality figures on which allowable catch estimates are based.
Norway
The
There has been no monitoring of the discard ban to evaluate its effectiveness, but retrospective studies have indirectly quantified the success of the ban through improvements in stock status and economic performance of fish stocks managed in Norwegian waters.[13][14]
Canada
Canada has also instituted a ban on discarding at sea in its Atlantic groundfish fishery that makes it illegal to return to the water any groundfish except those specifically authorised and those caught in cod traps. Authorised release is only considered for species that are known to have high survival rates on release, or where there is no practical or nutritional use for a particular species. In addition to the banning of discards, larger vessels are required to carry observers, which would imply that there are now no illegal discards on these vessels.[15]
Iceland
The introduction by the
New Zealand
The quota management system in place in New Zealand makes the discarding of most species of fish illegal. The ITQ system in New Zealand is a complex system, and when fish are landed by a fisher without quota for a particular species, they have the option to buy quota from another fisher, or the value of the overrun catch be surrendered to the state. In many cases the fishers find it easier to discard the fish at sea than go through the complex system of landing the fish and then making it legal.[15] There was a measurable increase in discarding immediately following the introduction of the ITQ system,[16] despite the fact that fishers were offered 10 per cent of the market price for fish landed outside quota. In an attempt to address this change, the New Zealand Government increased the percentage of market price paid to 50 per cent. The balance between offering an incentive to land discarded fish and the disincentive to catch fish over or outside quota limits is clearly a fine one, and dependent on the financial reward or penalty attached.
European Union
Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, a celebrity chef, led a campaign against this with a TV show called Hugh's Fish Fight, which successfully lobbied for a change in EU law to reduce the discards from thrown back fish in sea fishery.[17]
See also
Notes
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- ^ .
- .
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- doi:10.1051/alr:1996024. Archived from the original(PDF) on 2007-07-04.
- .
- ISSN 0308-597X.
- ^ T Løbach; A K Viem (September 1996). "Compatibility and applicability of discard/retention rules for the conservation and utilisation of fishery resources in the Northwest Atlantic". Workshop on Discard/Retention Rules. St Petersburg.
- ISSN 1064-1262.
- ISSN 1095-9289.
- ^ a b c d "A STUDY OF THE OPTIONS FOR UTILIZATION..." www.fao.org. Retrieved 2023-10-18.
- S2CID 20386271.
- ^ "Home". fishfight.net.
References
- Kelleher, Kieran (2005) Discards in the world’s marine fisheries. An update. FAO fisheries technical paper 470. ISBN 92-5-105289-1
- Weissenberger, Jean (2013). Discarding fish under the Common Fisheries Policy: Towards an end to mandated waste (PDF). Library of the European Parliament.