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he Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute (AFBI), Seafish and the Northern Ireland (NI) Scallop Association have recently completed a report investigating the optimal areas for scallop reseeding in the Irish Sea. This work was commissioned due to an increase in exploitation of scallops around the NI coastline and a desire by industry to be proactive in enhancing long-term sustainability of stocks. Sites selected through industry engagement as proposed reseeding sites were examined by AFBI scientists to ensure that they met the characteristics required for successful settlement of scallops. Seabed habitat maps were combined to provide information for the full sea area under consideration. Scallop catches from the annual AFBI scallop survey were mapped with the full habitat map to determine the areas where scallops were present and identify the underlying habitat type. This allowed a map to be created which showed the suitable habitat for adult scallops within NI waters. All of the proposed reseeding sites fell within areas of suitable habitat. To examine further characteristics of the proposed sites, a combination of measured and modelled data was used. Salinity, food availability, bed stress (natural physical disturbance of the seabed by wave action and/or tidal currents), particulate inorganic matter, suspended particulate matter, abundance of predators, spawning season, larval dispersal and hydrodynamic models were all considered. The above information was presented to the project steering group, and using the data provided, the steering group selected the most suitable sites for reseeding from the original 13 proposed sites. Three reseeding sites (Whitehead, Drumfad Bay and South Bay) have initially been proposed, with a fourth, Roaring Rock, having potential for any future reseeding plans. The NI Scallop Association will now present the results of this work to DAERA to ask for regulation to assist in the protection of these new areas through a ban on mobile fishing gear.

This report takes a high-level view of the whole of the seafood supply chain to explore factors impacting UK seafood markets, seafood business operations and consumer behaviour during October to December 2023.

Minutes for the meeting of the Whelk Management Group (WMG) which took place on 20th March 2024 via Microsoft Teams.

The Minutes of the Domestic & Export Sector Panel meeting, held on Monday 22 July 2024.

This project acknowledges the need for improvement in the quality of fish from inshore vessels, the majority of which are small and operate as day trip boats. The large fleet of inshore vessels under 16.5m lands an estimated value of fish of at least £100 million per annum. However, the quality of a proportion of this catch is often far from what it could be due to lack of facilities and temperature control. This report has been produced from a scanned original and may therefore contain some formatting and other inaccuracies. In cases where this affects the technical content, a paper copy of the original report can still be obtained from Seafish.

The 2005/06 operational year at Seafish was marked by balancing delivery with planning for the future. We delivered a significant number of projects in support of our industry whilst undertaking a detailed Board and Management review of industry needs and the competencies required of Seafish as an organisation to deliver solutions.

This report describes fishing trials undertaken by commercial Shell fishermen based in the SW of England overseen by a Seafish employee based in Newlyn, Cornwall. This project arose from another Seafish trial, based in the West of Scotland looking at investigation the potential for targeting Deep Sea Red Crab (Chaceon affinis). The pots used in this project were originally used as part of the Red Crab project though had subsequently become surplus to requirements. The pots were thought to have potential in the SW spider Crab fishery as a possible alternative to the use of tangle nets. 90 pots were allocated during April/May 2006 to 10 fishermen working from 6 different ports around the SW coast, both on the North and South coasts. All the pots were rigged with a 14” cone entrance and a netted bottom as originally supplied by the manufacturer. The fishermen were also supplied with a logsheet to record catches in order to assess the effectiveness of these pots compared with a standard Inkwell or parlour pot. . On first inspection, fishermen were generally happy with the overall design of the pots, though the pots produced mixed results. The tendency being that they did not fish as well as standard inkwell pots fitted with 10” buckets. There were a number of reasons why the fishermen thought that these pots were not catching effectively, in the main it was thought that the Spider Crabs could too easily escape from the pots especially when the pots were not lying flat on the bottom due to insufficient weight in the base of the pot. The fishermen were invited to retain the pots and make any alterations they saw fit during the winter months to improve the pots performance.

March news alert sent to FMIG subscribers on 24 March 2022.

This report takes a high-level view of the whole of the seafood supply chain to explore factors impacting UK seafood markets, seafood business operations and consumer behaviour during July to September 2023.

The FisherMap protocol has been revised in order to map out commercial fishing grounds, main target species and gear contribution to fishermen’s livelihood. The initial version developed by Finding Sanctuary, the Marine Conservation Zone (MCZ) project for the South-west of England, used a questionnaire and mapping survey followed by validation meetings to describe the extent of fishing grounds. The revised protocol, used by the three new MCZ regional projects, links individual grounds to percentage gross earnings. Using data from the Seafish annual fisheries economic survey data by fleet segment, it will now be possible to convert individual percentage values into a common currency across fisheries, in a way similar to the 100 pennies approach pioneered by Ecotrust in California. The revised protocol also uses a simplified and standardised gear description directly compatible with the codes used by the Marine and Fisheries and other Agencies. This will make it easier to cross-validate data from various sources. However, the coarse time scale (overall average over last 5 years) and precise local spatial definition used in FisherMap provide unique and rich information that are not collected elsewhere. With the revised FisherMap, the validation group meetings will also have to discuss and finalise the overall economic value of composite maps of local fishing grounds. The same, or subsequent, group meetings presenting the regional conservation priorities will ask fishermen to share their expert local knowledge of essential fish habitats, features and species targeted by the conservation objectives. Local knowledge will be essential to obtain meaningful estimates of both economic and environmental impacts (positive and negative) that the MCZ regional projects need to estimate for their Impact Assessment (IA) of each proposed network and associated management regime. MCZ regional projects would greatly benefit from using Seafish species guides and information on basic fishing methods, and from collaborative work with Seafish, especially Seafish economists to devise a sampling strategy for fishing vessels along the coast and use the best economics data available to conduct their Impact Assessments.

This document is a summary of information on Brown crab (Cancer pagurus) targeted using pots/traps by vessels which land into Newlyn Harbour, Cornwall and is risk assessed using Seafish’s RASS scoring Guidance version 2.

Minutes from Scottish Seafish Advisory Committee (SSAC) meeting held on 18 June 2024.