UK Gear Forum
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Selective gear innovations have a vital role to play in advancing sustainability in wild capture fisheries. They are also central to the delivery of key fisheries objectives under the Fisheries Act 2020.
The UK Gear Forum has been created to discuss and progress activities to advance sustainability in all static and mobile wild capture fisheries. It aims to facilitate discussion, develop and deliver initiatives to advance sustainability through the lens of selective 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)
- 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 a UK-wide understanding and communication around what does, or does not work, as well as avoiding duplication of work.
The UK Gear Forum brings together stakeholders from across the wild capture supply chain, together with the research community and UK governments. Members include representatives from:
- fishing associations
- producers organisations
- gear technologists
- research community
- UK-wide governments
The Forum is chaired by Harry Wick, Chief Executive of the Northern Ireland Fish Producers’ Organisation and we provide secretariat support.
The inaugural meeting of the forum was held in July 2022. Going forward it will meet every two to three months.
Working principles for the UK Gear Forum were agreed at its meeting in December 2022. This includes priority work themes:
- Advancing the research evidence-base to inform the development of new policy and technical measures.
- An operating framework in which fishers are able to demonstrate and deploy more selective fishing gear designs.
- Tangible outputs which provide practical solutions to address priority industry challenges and needs.
- Timely dissemination of work outputs – and sign-posting to other good practice, including case studies – and in appropriate formats for the intended audiences.
- Further development and delivery of fit-for-purpose training resources for fishers and non-fishers.
These themes will inform a work programme to be taken forward by ‘task and finish’ working groups focussed on delivering practical solutions and outcomes.
A copy of the full UK Gear Forum Working Principles is available from the link below:
Further updates on UK Gear Forum work will be added here as projects are agreed and get underway.
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For queries on the UK Gear Forum please contact: