Fishers should be empowered to take the lead in managing fish stocks, an academic has declared.
Fisheries expert professor Paul Hart has examined the factors that have distanced fishers from the fisheries management process and is explaining his argument at a series of lectures in the UK and Norway.
As part of the lectures, he is discussing ways in which fishers are being brought back into the process of managing their stocks sustainably and contributing towards marine conservation.
Buckland lecture
Mr Hart is an emeritus professor in the department of neuroscience, psychology and behaviour at the University of Leicester and will deliver his argument as Buckland Professor for 2017, an honour derived from the “fish culture’-based trust fund set up by Victorian zoologist Frank Buckland, who was inspector for salmon fisheries in England and Wales.
The 2017 Buckland lecture is titled ‘Stewards of the Sea. Returning power to fishers’.
The first lecture on the topic took place at Plymouth’s National Marine Aquarium on 20 September.
Five lectures
The lecture will be repeated on 12 October at the University of St Andrews, 19 October in Bergen, Norway, 8 November at the University of East Anglia and on 9 November at the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (Cefas) Fisheries Laboratory, in Lowestoft, UK.
In 1930, the first Buckland lectures were given by professor Walter Garstang.
