Acronym LESSISMORE
Category
Fisheries
Title Less rejections and lower fishing effort for greater efficiency in small-scale fishing Programme National Programme
Instrument (FP6)
Contact Type (FP7)
Strand (Interreg)
NA
Theme (FP7)
Activity Area (FP6)
Regional Area (Interreg)
Action (COST)
NA
Specific Programme (FP7)
NA
Funding source National Coordinator Cristina B. Pita Coordinator email NA
Coordinator institution
ULisboa - University of Lisbon (Portugal)
Institutions involved
CCMAR - Center of Marine Sciences (Portugal) ,
CESAM - Centre for Environmental and Marine Studies (Portugal) ,
IPMA - Portuguese Institute for Sea and Atmosphere (Portugal) ,
Start year 2018 End year 2022 Funding (€) € 239,882 Website https://www.cesam-la.pt/projetos/lessismore-menos-rejeicoes-e-menor-esforco-de-pesca-por-uma-maior-eficiencia-na-pequena-pesca/ Summary Small-scale fishing (SPP) fisheries constitute an important component of the EU fleet (80% of the fleet, representing around 27% of EU fisheries revenue and more than 40% of EU fishermen). In Portugal, PPE has a great tradition and social, economic and cultural importance (it involved, in 2015, around 12,500 people on 6,216 ships, which corresponds to 50,759 tons landed, worth €143.17 million). Fishing gear selects catches by size and species. Therefore, a well-managed fishery should use gear that captures the majority of available species at sizes that do not affect the sustainability of the fishery. Understanding the type of gear used and the factors that influence its use is vital to determining the interaction between ecological and social changes. The use of non-selective fishing techniques, which leads to high rejection rates; and the non-restriction of fishing effort, leading to high discarded volumes, are the two processes identified as fundamental causes of the high discarded quantities. The assessment of discards is essential to assess the full impact of fishing on fish populations and the ecosystem. In European waters, discards are quite significant – around 19% of global discards occur in the FAO 27 area, which includes a large part of the EU EEZ – which has been identified as one of the main weaknesses of the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP). To improve this issue, the CFP reform applied the landing obligation to all fisheries that capture commercial species managed by the CFP regulation, meaning that the PPE is also subject to this obligation. Data collection on discards from commercial fisheries in EU waters is scarce and estimates of discarded quantities are generally low in precision. For this reason, discards represent an important but poorly documented source of fishing mortality in the EU, which contributes to the overfishing of European stocks. Despite the high socio-economic importance of PPE, most scientific research on discards in the EU has focused on large-scale fishing, assuming that discards from PPE are lower than those associated with industrial fishing. As a result, there is a lack of knowledge about many biological, environmental, socio-economic, management and policy aspects of PPE, particularly with regard to discards. To fill existing knowledge gaps regarding PPE, the main objectives of this study are to: 1. Quantify discards and fishing effort - during the first and second year, fishermen from different artisanal fishing gears will be contacted in five regions of the Portuguese coast, in order to characterize the fishery through logbooks; 2. Build predictive models to identify the best conditions for fishing, with less fishing effort and fewer discards - at the end of the first year, preliminary models will be developed for the different arts under analysis, at the end of the second year, predictive models will be developed that will identify the most favorable areas to capture the target species more effectively; 3. Assess the socioeconomic impact of reducing fishing effort, discards and enforcement of the landing obligation - during the first year, surveys will be developed and tested, during the second year the questionnaires will be developed. In the third and final year, a Discrete Choice Model will be created and validated; 4. Value/promote species that are usually rejected - at the end of the first year, the species to be promoted will be selected and new recipes will be tested in hotel schools in the selected regions; in the third year, competitions will be developed with restaurants in order to select the best recipe to enhance fish and the best recipes to encourage the young population to consume more fish; to complete this task, a cookbook will be developed.
Keywords
Discard;
Waste valorization;
Fishing effort;
Economy;
Environmental impact;
Small scale fisheries;
Marine Region
38
Portuguese Waters (27.IXa,27.IXb)
1
Marine Region Map
