One of the major success stories of the Dutch fishing industry is the emergence over the last decade of the Pelagic Freezer trawler Association (PFA). The association has become a major player in Europe and off Northwest Africa and is now sending its vessels to the South Pacific, reports Pieter Tesch.
Freezing at sea (FAS), the method of conservation and making it possible to supply high quality fish for human consumption all year round and from distant waters, was introduced in the Dutch pelagic fleet in the early 1970s.
But it was the crisis of the ban on herring fishing in the North Sea between 1977 and 1983 that forced Dutch trawler owners to look for alternative fishing grounds and pelagic target species, using the potential of FAS.
Thirty years later, three Dutch pelagic family owned trawler firms remain: W. van der Zwan & Zn, Parlevliet & van der Plas (P&P) and Cornelis Vrolijk’s Visserij Maatschappij (which also owns the firm Jaczon). They are all based in the traditional North Sea fishing ports of Scheveningen, Katwijk and IJmuiden and form the core of the PFA.
Additional member companies come from the UK (Interfish Ltd, North Atlantic Fishing Company), Germany (Doggerbank Seefischerei) and France (France Pélagique), and recently new EU member Lithuania (UAB Atlantic High Seas Fishing Company, operating around 25 vessels, of which more than half are Dutch flagged). All PFA vessels are flagged in EU member states.
“It has given PFA members flexibility to operate within the EU fishery framework that has put strict limits and ceilings on gross tonnage (GT) and kilowatts (KW),” PFA president Gerard van Balsfoort told World Fishing.
He explained that to allow P&P to put its latest acquisition, former Irish trawler “Atlantic Dawn” on the Dutch fishing register the firm had to rearrange the flag state of some of its vessels under the EU register.
Mr van Balsfoort stressed that these moves had been completely in compliance with the EU’s Common Fisheries Policy legal framework. “All KWs and GTs of the former “Atlantic Dawn” are within the EU fleet ceiling for The Netherlands.”
He added that she might be one of the world’s largest trawlers but as a freezer she would have to fish for up to a month to fill her hold to her maximum of seven million kilogrammes, while one of the modern European refrigerated seawater (RSW) trawlers can catch up to two million kilogrammes within a few days.
“The thing is that the smaller RSW tank boat may look friendlier to some but their daily catching capacity is often bigger than our larger sized freezers,” said Mr van Balsfoort. “The freezing capacity per 24 hours is in fact the catch limitation for a freezer trawler”.
“Atlantic Dawn” will, after some work at IJmuiden, possibly return to the South Pacific to join the two other P&P freezers present, “Maartje Theadora” and “Margiris”, to target jack mackerel outside the Chile 200 mile zone.
When asked, Mr van Balsfoort said, “there is nothing controversial about this as the fishing takes place outside the 200 mile zones. Furthermore, we fully agree with the need to regulate the fisheries on the high seas between the industry, coastal and other fishing states involved and international bodies”.
He pointed to the PFA’s active role in and support for the coastal states agreement to establish a total allowable catch (TAC) and management plan for blue whiting in the Northeast Atlantic, even though it has meant a reduction of about 40% of the blue whiting quota available to the PFA.
He also pointed to the active involvement – including financial – of the PFA in developing pelagic research in Western African waters and the cooperation between the Mauritanian fisheries institute IMROP and the Dutch research institute IMARES on pelagic issues.
“We fully subscribe to the principle of sustainability, but the PFA does not see a real contradiction between ecological and economic sustainability because we want stocks to be managed in such way that continuing and long term profitability can be achieved,” said Mr van Balsfoort. “We keep a long term view on our investments and operations. Part of this attitude is an open and constructive dialogue with environmental organisations like WWF that the PFA wants to entertain.”
The PFA North Sea herring fishery was one of the first major EU fisheries that received the sustainability certificate from the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) in May last year. Despite the weak recruitment of North Sea herring for the last four years, the MSC has agreed to renew the certificate for 2007 in recognition of the efforts by the PFA to manage the stock as a sustainable resource.
The reason for this is that the industry is conscious of the situation and responded quickly to the changing situation of the stock by proposing a cut of the 2007 TAC by 25% and promoting additional research into the underlying causes of the North Sea herring recruitment, said Mr van Balsfoort.
MSC spokeswoman Marnie Bammert explained that another surveillance audit would be carried in June. “If the stock has declined further the certifier will either impose additional conditions on the fishery or remove the certificate”.
