Scottish prawn fishermen meet to spearhead new initiatives to reduce discards

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The Scottish Fishermen’s Federation Nephrops Focus Group hosted a meeting of industry, fishermen, Marine Scotland management, gear manufacturers and experts at the end of last week.

The aim of the meeting was stimulating discussion and investigation into innovative ideas for net designs that will significantly reduce and hopefully eliminate discards in the Nephrops (prawn or langoustine) fisheries.

All major prawn fishermen's associations from throughout Scotland were represented at the meeting. It was recognised that urgent action is required to enable the large and dispersed Scottish prawn fleet to both fish economically and also meet the ever more stringent demands placed upon fishermen to comply with emerging legislation likely to emanate from the EC in an effort to eliminate discards by 2015.

The group was given a presentation by Mike Montgomerie, Gear Technologist at Seafish, which highlighted the effects of various gear configurations as well as emerging selectivity measures now being trialled or employed worldwide.

There then followed submissions from gear suppliers - Gamrie Bay Nets, Scotnet, Faithlie Trawls and Pisces - who have been working on new designs over the last few months. There was much and varied input from the group and it was decided to trial the ideas over the coming months with an objective of producing two workable gear designs by January 2012 and two more during the course of that year.

SFF chief executive Bertie Armstrong said: "We had exactly the right people round the Federation table to make a really serious start on meeting the challenge of discarding in the Scottish langoustine industry. The wealth of available experience, expertise and knowledge will be fully utilised, starting immediately with trials of innovative selective nets."

Mike Montgomerie of Seafish said: “It is good to see skippers and netmakers being proactive in coming up with innovative concepts and major trawl redesigns aimed at reducing discards in the Nephrops fishery. Over the coming months Seafish will be working with netmakers and skippers to further develop and refine these ideas, aiming to reduce discards to an acceptable level and ensure a sustainable future for the fishery.”