All of the UK’s fishing fleet should be fitted
Remote monitoring technology, including closed circuit television, is now widely available for fishing vessels, but is often not deployed. A study by WWF, the environmental group, has found numerous examples of fishermen obstructing physical monitoring by independent observers.
In extreme cases, this has involved practices including defiling measuring instruments, intimidating inspectors and refusing passage to women. While these are believed to be rare incidents, there is no comprehensive survey of their extent, obscuring the available data on whether fishing vessels are adhering to regulations on catch sizes.
One observer told WWF: “[After one particularly bad voyage] I refused to do another trip … It had been a frightening experience [because of poor conditions on the vessel] and on top of this I was threatened with violence ashore by one of the crew because losing the contract was going to cost the vessel and the crew lots of money.”
Without monitoring technology, the only ways of certifying catches are to rely on vessels’ own reporting, patchy satellite observations and occasional onshore monitoring of catches, nets and practices.
