Hi Mogens,

Firstly thank you for your comment and your interest. I will try to answer your questions to the best of my ability.

Firstly, yes, you are correct, a core element and a major driving force behind developing this system is the choke species issue, which it aims to alleviate.

I see the contradiction you refer to in terminology, but hopefully I can clarify. What we mean by working towards “precision fishing” is through vastly improving the spatial and temporal aspects of the management system, through the use of real-time information updates – therefore following the species distributions and fishing effort more finely, and being capable of responding efficiently to changing circumstances. This improves the precision and efficiency of the management, but also helps fishers to increase their own efficiency and targeting by providing the data back to them via the RTI maps.

In terms of ‘putting all species in one bucket’, the algorithms that define the tariff maps would not be based off one single species, but off a number of species (or ecosystem components) based on the management priorities for a given area. This is best illustrated in the Kraak et al. (2015) paper which demonstrates the use of RTI based on 3  target species, and one non-target vulnerable elasmobranch species, albeit using a simplified model. The current project is looking to elaborate on this, using a multi-species size-spectrum model of 24 interacting species over 4 sub-areas within the Celtic Sea. This will better be able to quantify the effects/impacts upon both target and non-target species, and those used to define the maps, and those that are not.

We believe the system is equally relevant in all sea basins – but indeed you are correct, not all are created equally, or face the same issues as one another. As such, the rules, or management priorities that go in to specifying the harvest controls rules (and hence, the algorithms that produce the maps) are area specific – be that on a sea basin, or a management area level – the system can be adapted to the required scale and is not intended to be a ‘one size fits all’.

As for the ‘efficiency line’ – again I would direct you to the Kraak et al.  2015 paper. In it, it was demonstrated (using the simplified model) that RTI is capable of managing to the most restrictive species (the ‘choke’ species), whilst providing more opportunities to avail of the non-choke species than would be available under TAC  or effort management (with the landing obligation). So, in essence, it manages to the choke species to prevent overfishing of the most vulnerable species, whilst maximising the opportunities to catch the non-choke target species, whilst also managing vulnerable non-target species such as elasmobranchs. We aim to build on these results with the more complex modelling and MSE that we are currently working on.

I hope this answers your question, but of course, please let me know if there is anything that is not clear. Happy to discuss.

Thanks,

Debbi.

Thanks for your extensive answer, Debbi. We are not fully aligned, I would like to "calculate" tradeoffs related to F targets and to fishermens earnings given alternative strategies (TAC's v. Credits).

Working on "precision fishing" may be the most important work to do now given the new CFP boundaries. I look forward to follow your work. I also hope you will see your work as providing  instruments for fishermen to choose. In essence I'm for free choice of methods for fishermen given they account for the "damage"  - that is all catches count against quotas (or credits) and accurate documentation to that effect is established. http://bit.ly/2ruDQce  Good wind with your work. Best Mogens