Falklands : Fisheries Committee Meeting Report (21/07/06)
Submitted by Falkland Islands News Network (Juanita Brock) 25.07.2006 (Article Archived on 08.08.2006)
Find out what happened during this vital committee meeting.
FISHERIES COMMITTEE REPORT (07/21/06)
By J. Brock (FINN)
A meeting of the Fisheries Committee took place in the Liberation Room of the Secretariat at 0900hrs on Friday, 21 July 2006. In attendance were Cllr Dr Andrea Clausen (Chair), Cllr Richard Cockwell, Mr Drew Irvine (Argos Ltd), Mr Stuart Wallace (Fortuna Ltd) and Mrs Cheryl Roberts (Beauchene Vessels Ltd) Mr Lewis Clifton (Byron Marine Ltd) Mr. David Lang QC (Attorney General). Dr John Barton (Director of Fisheries) and Mrs Irene Ewing (Minutes).
After Declarations of interests were sorted the minutes of the meeting held on 09 June 2006 were confirmed. Matters arising from those minutes were then discussed. Industry representation is in hand and the 20th anniversary of the fishery plans will go to EXCO for consideration. A Report on High Seas Bottom Trawling was seen to be useful, with historic information. DEFRA would be approached with this paper but Lewis Clifton said that the Committee needed to see the Report first. John Barton said it needed to be tidied up prior to presentation. John Barton mentioned that the implementation of the Illex fishery into the new fisheries agreement was due to popular agreement and request of the private fisheries industry. Stuart Wallace agreed that from a commercial point of view industries needed more time.
The Bioeconomic Analysis of the Loligo Gahi fishery was deferred from the last meeting was discussed at length. Recommendations from the analysis were considered. The objective of this study was to investigate and quantify the factors and management actions that affect resource rents associated with the Loligo gahi (Patagonian squid) fishery in the Falkland Islands. Though this report was produced more than a year ago, it had been shelved in favour of the new fisheries policy and has yet to go to Executive Council. Seeing that it is over a year old, the report does contain some old material. Hopefully the anomalies will be taken care of by the Fisheries Department and the industry prior to the next meeting where the paper will be considered again.
The real identity of Falklands Loligo was discussed with the emphasis being the marketability of the genetic stock around the Falklands. The stock had been renamed by exchanging “Ghai” for “Patagonicus” but this had minimal results. Stock around the Falklands is seen to be better and more marketable, thus a new name for this genetically separate stock would be an advantage. Nonetheless, new scientific data – length, weight and the like – would need to be collected before a marketing strategy would be feasible. According to Cheryl Roberts, Sasha Arkhipkin is looking into the science behind the renaming Loligo Gahi. Nothing more will be done with the report until the Chief Executive sees it. He will be in attendance at the next Fisheries Committee Meeting in September.
The project on population Ecology and Fisheries Management of Loligo was discussed. This project is related to the Bioeconomic paper. Much depends on the data that is fit into the model. This would be discussed within the fisheries department. Stuart Wallace asked if we needed the current strategy validated and John Barton said there were a lot of areas where there was uncertainty. Different information from the models needs to be collated so that his staff would be able to decide what strategy was right.
The final paper to be considered in the public section of the meeting was the July 2006 Exploratory (Longline) Fishery for Kingclip. Kingclip is normally a by-catch but on a few previous attempts, it was targeted as a main species with variable results. Kingclip is valuable in its own right with a market value of £11.5Million in the UK. After a 3-month survey targeted research resulted in by-catches of Ray and Toothfish. It was important that the method of fishing for this species would take seabird mitigation into consideration. A desktop study and review of all data would be an option. Luis Clifton mentioned that one item that was not addressed was ITQ procedures for restricted finfish. He added that we should await the outcome of ITQ on other finfish industries before considering this further. Drew Irvine thought this was reasonable and advantage should be taken without delay. The Kingclip, if we get a market, could be sold FOB Stanley for a better profit. Still it could be that more Skate would be caught and that our potential for Kingclip profit would be approximately £1Millon.
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