SUPPORTING THE COMMERCIAL UPTAKE OF INNOVATIVE FISHING GEAR

Supporting the commercial uptake of innovative fishing gear. The UK Gear Forum brings together industry, researchers and governments to discuss and advance gear innovations to drive sustainability in fishing.

UK Gear Forum focus and role

Gear innovations have a vital role to play in advancing sustainability in wild capture fisheries. At the heart of this progress, lies the adoption of innovative fishing gear and technologies that are designed to:

• improve selectivity (the targeting of specific species and sizes while reducing bycatch);
• minimise impacts on marine seabed habitats;
• enhance vessel energy efficiency;
• improve animal welfare; and
• improve economic performance (e.g. by increasing the quality of seafood catches.)

Such gears are also central to the delivery of key fisheries objectives under the Fisheries Act 2020.

The UK Gear Forum is convened to discuss and progress activities to advance sustainability using static and mobile gear in wild capture fisheries. It aims to facilitate discussion, develop and deliver initiatives to advance sustainability through the lens of gear innovations.

The forum operates on a ‘hub and spoke’ model. This involves:

• maintaining a helicopter perspective of regional-level projects and initiatives (the ‘spokes’); and
• ensuring that these outputs inform an overall UK-wide collaborative approach (the ‘hub’).

Sharing intel, building understanding and developing collaborative partnerships, to bring scale and shared resources to address common sustainability challenges, are a central focus for the Forum. This will support building UK-wide understanding and communication around what does, or does not work, as well as avoiding duplication of work.

Membership of the UK Gear Forum

The UK Gear Forum brings together stakeholders from across the wild capture supply chain; including representatives from:

• fishing associations
• producer organisations
• gear technologists
• research community
• UK / devolved governments (policy makers and regulators)

The Forum is chaired by Dr Lynn Gilmore, Chief Executive of the Northern Ireland Fish Producers Organisation and Seafish provides secretariat support.

UK Gear Forum working principles

The inaugural meeting of the Forum was held in July 2022 and a number of overarching working principles have been established:

1. Advancing the research evidence-base to inform the development of new policy and technical measures.
2. An operating framework in which fishers are able to demonstrate and deploy more innovative fishing gear designs.
3. Tangible outputs which provide practical solutions to address priority industry challenges and needs.
4. Timely dissemination of work outputs – and sign-posting to other good practice, including case studies – and in appropriate formats for the intended audiences.
5. Further development and delivery of fit-for-purpose training resources for fishers and non-fishers.

Supporting the commercial uptake of innovative fishing gear

Despite the UK’s strong track record in gear innovation, turning successful trials into widespread commercial use remains a challenge.

Seafish has worked with the UK Government, devolved administrations, fishing industry bodies and gear technologists to explore how to accelerate the uptake of innovative fishing gear in the UK.

Our new report, Supporting the Commercial Uptake of Innovative Fishing Gear, sets out practical recommendations for the fishing industry and Fisheries Administrations, to work together to create a more enabling regulatory environment and help accelerate the commercial adoption of successfully trialled innovative designs. This is crucial to enable the sector to continue to be a leader on fishing sustainability and help safeguard the future of UK seafood.

The report’s recommendations help to set the priorities for the future work of the UK Gear Forum.

Image credit: Seafish

Source