Seafish and the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) from Project Inshore which for the first time has mapped all English inshore fisheries and developed sustainability ‘roadmaps'' to help secure seafood supplies.
The ‘Project Inshore’ project has produced bespoke reports for each of the English Inshore Fisheries & Conservation Authorities (IFCAs) in order to enable these inshore fisheries managers to come together to co-ordinate efforts.
Dr Tom Pickerell, technical director at Seafish and one of Project Inshore’s instigators, said: “Before we started Project Inshore we knew that for many fisheries there was insufficient information available to determine stock status and ecosystem impacts. These ‘data deficient’ fisheries are a result of limited funding being available to support research into all fisheries, often resulting in a necessary focus on those of most economic importance”
The new roadmaps provide information and guidance for the IFCAs on what to do and how to do it, to move fisheries towards higher levels of performance, ultimately reaching a standard that could go forward for MSC certification.
In total, the project found that around 50 fisheries were found to be performing at a level that could be considered in the short to medium term to move on to full MSC assessment.
Seafish has been contacted by organisations in the US interested in the feasibility of the approach in California inshore fisheries and there is also interest in repeating the project in the Baltic and Mediterranean Seas as a blueprint for data-deficient fisheries management.
