by
Iain MacSween
Scottish Fish Producers Organization
Edinburgh 4, Scotland
Abstract
The marketing of fish is an integral part of the activity of fishing. As such any management measures introduced have implications for the marketing of the species in question.
There are two basic categories of objectives of management - biological and economic. The biological objectives, is based on the idea of maximising physical yield, although this is a rather simplistic objective and one that is difficult to attain and measure. The economic objective comes into conflict with the biological one when it is argued that the emphasis should be on the economic yield, not the physical yield. But if maximum sustainable yield is too simplistic, then economic yield can be criticised as too complex given the inter-relationship between costs and prices.
The actual objectives, therefore, inevitably involve some compromise, particularly internationally when added complications arise. This compromise tends to lean towards biological yield and in particular to the introduction of catch quotas.
Given that catch quotas are to be introduced they can affect either the size, the condition, and the total amount of fish caught.
The marketing of fish tends to have been ignored by managers and as it is part of an interrelated process it must be taken into account when desiring management measures. But there may be conflict between the needs of management and the needs of the market. Measures introduced may disrupt the flow of supply to the market throughout the year; they may also dictate the size and quality of the fish and these may not correspond with the standards of the market. Thus the product being delivered to the market can be affected by the management measures introduced.
In practice it has to be recognized that there are limits upon the volume a market can absorb. Achieving maximum physical yield could, therefore, cause serious marketing problems. Whilst over-supplying a market can cause problems, so can prohibiting fishing until a spawning stock biomass sufficient to sustain maximum yield is achieved.
The actual management measures introduced over the past few years within the European Community have tended towards those regulating the size of fish caught, the seasons and areas in which they can be caught and the total amount that may be caught.
Closures by areas or seasons generally cause no marketing problems and contribute towards stock conservation. This is particularly true if alternative supplies of the same species are available elsewhere, although closed areas can disrupt the supplies of other species contained within that area.
Regulations involving minimum mesh sizes tend to harmonize with the requirements of the market. Such measures generally result in the larger sizes being landed although it may on occasions lead to a shortage of some smaller fish.
Restrictive licensing has rarely been used and in the context of over-capacity has had no real impact on the market.
A much more common method has been restriction by per man or per vessel quotas. This can lead to cases of shortages or gluts and a deterioration of quality if there is not adequate on-board storage capacity. Fishermen will also try to land the very best quality fish and discard the remainder. In addition to undoing the benefits of conservation measures such practices deprive the market of the full range of selections.
INTRODUCTION
Fishing as an activity takes place when a number of conditions have been fulfilled. Broadly speaking these conditions are, when there is fish available to be caught and their existence is known; when fishermen and fishing vessels are available and able to exploit the fish stocks; and when some sort of market exists, prepared to accept the catches landed at a return to the catcher that makes future catching worthwhile.
Given this the state of a fishery can be judged in a number of ways. These include the volume of landings, the state of the stock or stocks which produce the landings, the level of profitability or otherwise of the vessels pursuing the fishery, and the returns enjoyed by the other sections of the industry. It follows, therefore, that the existence of more than one way of gauging the success of a fishery means that its relative state will be different according to the standpoint from which it is judged.
Nevertheless, it should be possible to find some situations which form an acceptable compromise from the point of view of most of the people involved. It is doubtful, however, whether such compromise solutions occur naturally, or if they do, whether they can continue in existence for very long. Indeed in several well documented cases a state of affairs has been reached in which the fishery is in an unhealthy state from all viewpoints. The most extreme of these is the case of those fisheries which have been prosecuted to the point of commercial extinction at least for a period of time. It has become increasingly obvious, therefore, that a laissez-faire policy cannot be relied upon to ensure successful and healthy fisheries, and consequently some form of fisheries management is generally necessary.
The conclusion that the management of fish stocks is generally necessary at some stage does, however, raise the question as to what exactly it should try to achieve. Broadly speaking the objectives of fisheries management as either implemented or suggested fall into two categories - biological and economic.
BIOLOGICAL OBJECTIVES
Fish are a living resource, capable of reproduction, and good management allied to certain stable external conditions can result in a stock being sustained for an indefinite period. Each stock is capable of sustaining a certain yield, and in the absence of fishing a stock of fish seeks to achieve equilibrium between the recruitment of young fish and the growth of existing individuals on the one hand, and the losses due to natural death on the other. When fishing commences, however, it will tend to reduce the size of the fish stock. This is in turn likely to be offset by an increase in recruitment and growth and a reduction in the number of natural deaths as a result, for example, of the increased food supply available to each fish. The fish stock may, therefore, achieve a new equilibrium position at which the rate of decrease as a result of fishing will equal the rate of increase through natural growth. This represents a sustainable yield and the size of this yield depends on the size of the fish stock. One such stock level is capable of producing the maximum sustainable yield which corresponds to the greatest physical yield that stock can produce and go on producing year after year. This concept was developed against the background of the law of diminishing returns applying to fish stocks and does, therefore, when converted into biological curves of yield against effort, produce a pronounced maximum.
So the biological approach has been to maximise the physical production of the oceans. Such an approach has several attractions. It suggests the production of the maximum possible foodstuffs and it is based on a fairly simple and understandable mechanism of how stocks react to exploitation. Another major advantage is that it is determined by a simple physical measure - the weight of fish actually landed and recorded. Not only does this assist in implementing the necessary management measures, but it removes the problems of differing relative values encountered in those fisheries exploited by different countries. But in reality the situation is not always so straightforward. Fish stocks do not behave in simple, mechanistic ways that can be accurately forecast and it is not always easy to determine precisely where the maximum sustainable yield occurs. This difficulty is compounded by the fact that the yield for some demersal species is flat over a substantial range in the vicinity of maximum yield. Furthermore the concept has been criticised on the grounds that it has nothing to say about the development of a virgin stock as it is not a dynamic concept - it specifies only the final state, not the way in which that state is reached. Furthermore it is recognized that there are problems in maximizing the sustainable yields in mixed or multi-species fisheries, especially if some of the species are ecologically related, as when competing for the same food.
These difficulties are formidable enough, but the objective of maximizing the sustainable yield of a fish stock has also been attacked on economic grounds. This brings us to a consideration of economic objectives for fisheries management.
ECONOMIC OBJECTIVES
Economists have argued that the attainment of the maximum physical yield makes no economic sense, and that the goal of fisheries management should be to achieve the maximum economic yield. This is achieved when the difference between the total revenue accruing to a fleet participating in a fishery and the total costs of that fleet is at its greatest. This is, therefore, the profit maximizing position which is characterized in economic models by the equality of marginal revenue and marginal cost.
In most fisheries it is correct to assume that the maximum economic yield and maximum sustainable yield are achieved at different levels of fishing effort and that generally the maximum economic yield requires a smaller amount of effort than the maximum sustainable yield.
Maximum economic yield is not, however, free from criticism. One of its disadvantages is that some of the crucial inputs are the price of fish and the unit cost of fishing. Not only will these vary from year to year, they will almost certainly vary from country to country. Given the differing interrelationships between costs and prices, it may well be impossible to determine a single maximum economic yield for all countries.
Maximum economic yield also has different implications from maximum sustainable yield, insofar as actual policy measures are concerned. Given that the level of effort associated with maximizing the economic yield is usually smaller than that associated with maximizing the physical yield, the adoption of economic yield could result in high unemployment in remote areas where there is little alternative employment.
Despite the difficulties associated with the attainment of maximum economic yield, the concept does nevertheless suggest certain policy measures. The recognition that the level of inputs devoted to an open access fishery is greater than that required for the economic optimum has led to the policy prescription that entry to the fishery should be controlled. More specifically it has been asserted that the goal of economic efficiency can be approached by preventing excessive entry into the fishery.
ANNUAL OBJECTIVES
Given that the policy maker is faced with a choice of objectives, it is clear that all the various interests are unlikely to be satisfied simultaneously at any one particular level of fishing effort. It is highly likely, therefore, that the policy adopted will seek to achieve some sort of compromise between the interests involved. This is particularly difficult in the case of international fisheries and especially because the different countries involved are likely to have different costs and earnings relationships and will give different weightings to the various objectives. Because of these difficulties and because non-biological objectives are rarely quantified, the biological concept of maximum sustainable yield has become the more widely accepted policy goal. The strategy of trying to achieve this yield is, however, modified in practice in the case of heavily over-exploited fisheries by the realisation that a rapid reduction from high levels of catches to a level commensurate with the achievement of maximum sustainable yield would be extremely disruptive in the short term. So whilst the long term objective of fisheries management is usually expressed as the attainment of maximum sustainable yield, the short term objective is usually expressed as some percentage change from the current level of fishing activity. To the fisheries scientist the level of fishing activity means the level of fishing mortality on the fish stock and the short term objective of management is, therefore, usually expressed as some level of fishing mortality.
Obviously, from the point of view of actual management measures, the concept of fishing mortality has to be translated into something more concrete and readily attainable and enforceable. The choice this presents is to either limit the level of fishing effort or to limit the overall catch, or sometimes a combination of both. In most international fisheries, but also frequently in domestic fisheries, the fisheries administrators have tended to favour catch quotas. Thus the advice which the administrators require from the fisheries scientists is usually the level of catch corresponding to some chosen level of fishing mortality. This level of catch is usually referred to as the total allowable catch and is the maximum total catch that can be taken from a stock by everyone fishing it in any one year to meet a specified management objective. This step by step approach towards a long term goal is also favoured because of uncertainty surrounding the impact on the ecosystems of major changes in the abundance of several of the main fish stocks in the system.
In the context of the European Economic Community, the basis for fisheries management is the sub-division of the total allowable catches for the various species between the individual Member States. Basically this continues the system established under the North-East Atlantic Fisheries Commission with the major difference that the extended jurisdiction of the individual littoral States creates a European pond from which non-community countries can be legally excluded. So in some respects the policy prescription suggested by the proponents of maximizing the economic yield have been moved forwards as a result of the global movement towards extended fisheries jurisdiction. But apart from excluding all or part of the fishing effort of foreign countries, the main thrust of fisheries management has been devoted towards regulating the catches of particular species by a variety of methods.
TECHNIQUES OF MANAGEMENT
Over the years, a variety of management measures have been introduced and the principal measures have been as follows:
The establishment of open or closed seasons
The establishment of open or closed areas
The regulation of mesh sizes in fishing nets
The regulation of the size limits of fish that may be retained on board any fishing vessel, or landed and subsequently offered for sale
The prohibition of directed fishing for particular species
The regulation of the total catch of a species or group of species by means of “per vessel” or “per man” quotas
The regulation of the number of vessels permitted to prosecute a particular fishery
The regulation of fishing gear and appliances other than the size of mesh
These measures can mostly be placed into one of two groups according to whether they affect the size or condition of fish caught, or the total amount of fishing.
MARKETING CONSIDERATIONS
At the very outset, the activity of fishing was defined as an interactive process between the stocks in the sea, the process of locating and catching them and the final stage of actually marketing the produce. In the literature and practice of fisheries management, however, consideration and action is usually confined to only two of the areas outlined above. The biological objectives of management relate to the state of the fish stock in question and many of the actual management measures taken are introduced with the specific objective of controlling the size and amount of fish removed from the sea. In a similar fashion the debate surrounding the economic objectives of management is concentrated primarily on controlling the level of fishing effort devoted to a particular stock. Very little consideration has been given to the impact of such management measures upon the marketing of the produce or indeed the implications for management of satisfying the marketing requirements in respect of the managed species. This has proved in some respects to have been a serious omission has has led to serious problems.
Given that the marketing of the catch is an integral part of the activity of fishing, it is essential that any management measures are devised with this in mind. There is very little point in managing a fishery in such a way that it leads to either a collapse of the market which will in turn preclude the catching of the fish or to a level of returns to the catcher that will render his operation unviable and lead to a cessation of catching in the longer term.
It should be recognized, however, that there are many difficulties in introducing and enforcing management measures which would simultaneously satisfy the requirements of preserving the stock, making the fishing operation viable, and satisfying the requirements of the market.
Indeed in some respects the needs of the market are at variance with the way in which fishing vessels operate. In the United Kingdom where most of the fish landed is subject to processing of some kind or another, the basic requirement of most processors is for an even and continuous supply of fish of an acceptable quality to ensure continuity of production in their processing factories. This is particularly true of demersal fisheries. Furthermore, the marketing infrastructure is generally geared towards dealing with a continuous inflow of fish that will maintain ports, cold storage and freezing facilities, transport facilities, processing and distribution facilities operating at a viable level. But for a variety of reasons, even in a situation in which there is no necessity for management measures, it is very difficult to ensure a smooth and continuous supply of fish to the market where this is desired. This may be the result of natural factors such as weather or changes in stock abundance which lead to peaks and troughs in the volume of supplies to the market. For example, fishing for demersal species in the North Sea tends to be frequently curtailed during the winter months due to adverse weather and the shorter number of daylight hours. Other species such as mackerel which are migratory by nature are only available to be caught in a relatively few months each year, and so landings reach a peak in those months with very little being caught in the remainder of the year.
Processors wishing to handle migratory species such as mackerel, and/or shellfish whose landings peak dramatically in the summer, must therefore resort to freezing stocks, to provide for continuity of production throughout those months in which there are little or no fresh supplies available.
But the market may require certain fish at specific times of the year when their quality reaches an acceptable standard. Herring is a prime example. The marketing of this species depends crucially upon the condition in which it is landed. Autumn spawning herring is in its prime condition in the summer months prior to spawning when its flesh tends to be full and firm, and the fat content acceptable for a variety of end products.
So the marketing requirements for some species is for a continuous flow of supply throughout the year, though this is likely to be disrupted from time to time by a variety of natural factors. In the case of certain other species, however, the marketing requirements are such that the fish are only acceptable at specific times of the year due to the variations in quality that occur naturally throughout the year.
Insofar as volume is concerned, the market also places demands upon the catcher as to the size of fish landed. So there is at the point of catching a direct inter-relationship between the size of fish the market requires, and the size of fish the scientists recommend be taken for conservation purposes. So although there may be no direct marketing input into the management process, some management measures do in themselves dictate the nature of the product delivered to the market, and ideally that which is delivered should correspond to that required by the market. Equally the market sets standards for fish insofar as the presentation and quality of the product is concerned. These standards can be crucially influenced by the management measures adopted. Quality is obviously affected by the handling practices on board the catching vessel, such as boxing and icing, and by the length of time the vessel remains at sea. Management measures which try to influence the level of fishing effort can, therefore, indirectly affect the quality of the fish landed. This can work in either a positive or a negative manner. Measures which tend to shorten fishing voyages in an attempt to curtail the level of fishing effort would generally be expected to result in a better quality fish being landed. But management measures can also lead to longer fishing voyages on occasions and thus have a detrimental effect upon the quality of the fish subsequently landed. It is also possible for management measures to be devised in such a way that they affect the presentation of the fish brought to the market. In the case of demersal species, for example, management measures can be framed so as to require species to be landed in a gutted as opposed to an ungutted condition. This has a fairly direct influence on the level of effort devoted to a fishery as the process of gutting tends to reduce the speed of the fishing operation, and it also reduces the choice of presentations laid before the market.
It would appear, therefore, that whilst the marketing requirements may be fairly specific insofar as volume, size, quality and presentation are concerned, these can be influenced not only by natural factors, but also by the impact management measures have upon the actual process of catching, and the subsequent delivery to the market.
Fluctuations in catches result also from the pattern of fishing adopted by the fishermen. In a Scottish context there is a tendency for a large part of the fleet to operate on a weekly basis with boats going off to sea on a Sunday evening or early Monday morning. Such vessels generally land towards the end of the week and in particular on Thursday and Friday. Such a pattern does not always correspond with the requirements of the market which would ideally wish to avoid an upsurge in landings towards the end of the week when demand for the product is generally tending to tail off. Management measures may similarly affect the pattern of fishing and thus affect the marketing regime. Measures designed to curtail the level of effort can lead to more frequent landings, whilst other measures, and in particular those curtailing the permitted catch, can either curtail or prolong fishing voyages, depending upon the rate of catch recorded by the vessel. So management measures which affect the pattern of fishing directly can also indirectly affect the marketing of the produce. One would hope that this effect would be beneficial in its impact.
It is obvious, therefore, that the measures adopted to manage fisheries have an influence on the marketing of the catch and it is important that efforts be made to coordinate any management measures with marketing requirements.
Given that the main thrust of fisheries management is the attainment of certain biological objectives, it is instructive to examine how these inter-relate with the requirements of the market and in particular how management measures actually adopted within the context of the United Kingdom's fishing industry have affected the marketing of fish.
The basic long-term biological objective of fisheries management has already been stated as the attainment of the stock's maximum sustainable yield. But from a marketing point of view it must be asked whether this is a desirable goal to aim at given certain limitations placed upon the marketing process in the short term. In this context it should be noted that the definition of market would primarily be outlets geared towards the provision of food for human consumption. For certain species the market can be radically expanded by utilizing processes to make animal foodstuffs.
Nevertheless it is important to establish that the market for a highly perishable foodstuff such as fish is finite. There are limits upon the volume that the market can absorb, either for human consumption or for other purposes. So whilst the biological objectives must of necessity be based upon the scientific assessment of what a stock can produce without adversely affecting that stock, attention should also be paid to what the requirements of the market are, and whether the level of fishing mortality associated with a particular total allowable catch is an appropriate target to aim at. The dilemma this poses is perhaps best illustrated by the position of North Sea herring and West of Scotland herring at the present time.
In the course of 1977 the North Sea was, on the basis of scientific advice, closed to directed herring fishing to prevent total stock failure. A similar decision was taken in 1978 in respect of the West of Scotland herring stock. The prohibition on the directed fishing of any species is the most extreme management measure that can be taken and its implementation poses a number of short and long term marketing problems.
The immediate short term result of any such closure is, of course, to deprive the market of supplies. Thus, from landings of just over 38,000 tons in 1977, the Scottish herring catch fell to 2,000 tons in 1979. The impact this has had on the market for herring was dramatic. Faced with the prospect of there being no fresh herring supplies available many of the smaller herring processors went out of business or switched to other species. This in turn deprived the consumers of supplies of a product to which they had become accustomed and which they had and purchased in substantial quantities. This has had serious marketing repercussions in the longer term. In particular the non-availability of the species has led to a dramatic contraction of the market for the herring and its associated products. The problem this caused did not become immediately apparent to fishermen as they were able to switch their fishing activity to other species, particularly mackerel. The real scale of the problem only became apparent once herring fishing resumed in 1981 off the West Coast of Scotland. Out of a total Scottish catch of over 30,000 tons, some 11,000 tons remained unsold for human consumption and went for reduction to fishmeal. In the following year, of the Scottish catch of 30,000 tons of herring, some 8,000 tons had to be utilized for fishmeal. So in a very real sense, the ban on fishing for herring eliminated the demand for the species and caused very serious marketing problems. There were also some indirect effects. One of these was that those firms which remained in herring processing imported supplies from countries elsewhere in the world which continued to fish for the species. Having established chains of supplies these processors proved reluctant to dispense with their external suppliers even after domestic fishing had resumed.
So the most extreme management measure which can be utilized to achieve the biological objective of sustaining a healthy stock is likely to have extremely serious repercussions for the marketing of the species in question. Any prohibition should, therefore, only be introduced in those circumstances in which continued fishing is likely to result in stock failure.
The markets for the produce of the sea are finite and consideration should therefore be given to whether the attainment of maximum sustainable yield is the best objective. From a marketing point of view should not policy measures aim at an alternative objective? Again the problems this can pose can be examined in relation to herring. The estimated maximum sustainable yield for North Sea herring is put somewhere in the region of 600,000 tons per annum. The comparable figure for the West Coast of Scotland is in the region of 100,000 tons. So the possible herring offtake from the European pond would, if maximum sustainable yield was achieved, be in the region of 700,000 tons per annum, without taking account of any additional supplies from the Baltic or the more northerly Atlanto-Scandian herring stock. This volume is certainly in excess of market requirements insofar as human consumption is concerned and does, therefore, raise the question as to the time scale that should be pursued in moving towards the long term biological objective. In the case of the North Sea, the scientific advice has been that directed herring fishing should not resume until a spawning stock of 800,000 tons has been achieved. At this level it is considered that the risk of recruitment failure due to a low spawning stock biomass is relatively low. But is it realistic to defer a resumption of fishing till this level of spawning stock is achieved in the knowledge that the longer the resumption of fishing is delayed the less likely there is to be a market for the produce, unless of course, fishmeal is considered to be an acceptable outlet? There is surely a very real case for allowing fishing on over-exploited stocks even if this delays the achievement of the long-term biological objectives, if the alternative is the disappearance of the market for the species involved. Such a decision should not, however, be taken if this involves a real threat to the future of the stock and this, therefore, implies more stringent management measures than might otherwise apply.
It can be shown, therefore, that there could in certain circumstances be an element of conflict between the requirements of the market and the biological objectives of management, and this should be borne in mind when devising actual management measures.
It is also possible for such conflict to be present in those situations in which a fishery is being managed to attain the so-called economic objective. Accepting the general premise that the maximization of the rent of a fishery involves a level of fishing effort less than that associated with maximum sustainable yield leads to the conclusion that the level of catch actually taken will be somewhat less than the maximum physical yield possible. But in the case of many species the level of catches associated with maximum sustainable yield is not excessive in relation to market requirements. This is true of many demersal species such as cod in a European context. Even if maximum sustainable yield of cod was achieved in the waters of the European pond there would still be a shortfall compared with the level of supplies required by the market. To manage such a fishery on the basis of economic objectives, and restrict the catch even further, would therefore deprive the market of supplies which could be absorbed without depressing returns to the catchers to uneconomic levels. This would rlesult in a market disequilibrium if alternative supplies could not be found elsewhere.
So, there can be a degree of conflict between the marketing requirements for a particular species and the general objectives of fisheries management, whether these objectives be biological or economic. It is therefore not sufficient when considering the management of a fishery to consider only the objectives of that management. Consideration must also be given to the implications of the management regime introduced and in particular how they affect the marketing of the produce, which activity is an important as actually catching the fish.
IMPACT OF MANAGEMENT TECHNIQUES
Having established that it is possible for the requirements of the market to be at variance with the objectives of management, it is instructive to review the interaction between those management measures generally adopted and the needs of the market.
Open or closed seasons and areas
Closed seasons have normally been introduced to protect mature fish prior to and during spawning. This measure is frequently combined with the closure of a specific area which is known to correspond to the spawning grounds of the species in question. Closed seasons have often been adopted in the case of pelagic species when their spawning is somewhat concentrated geographically and chronologically. Given this the impact on marketing may be minimal as the quality of pelagic species tends to be better just prior to spawning. Marketing problems in this sphere have also been avoided due to the fact that several pelagic fisheries may be being prosecuted concurrently. So the closure of the West of Scotland herring grounds in late July and August was offset by the prosecution of herring fisheries in the Firth of Clyde, North Sea and North Irish Sea. Thus the impact of areal or seasonal closures on the market will be minimized if there are alternative supplies and this has often been the case insofar as pelagic species are concerned.
In recent years, however, there has been a move towards areal closures to protect the younger fish contained within a stock. The British Government has for several winter months each year closed a specific area on the West Coast of Scotland where it is generally accepted that young herring over-winter. As young herring are of little interest to the market such a closure is actually beneficial. It prevents supplies that are unwanted coming on to the market. Much the same is true of mackerel in the waters off the South-West of England, where it is known that one of the stocks over-winters. A high proportion of these fish tend to be young and not in demand so the prohibition on fishing within the designated areas helps both to conserve the stock and to prevent supplies of undesirable sizes of the species coming on to the market. One problem with such closures is that they can lead to problems in supplying the market with other species that may be located in the closed area. An example of this is the sprat fishery off the West Coast of Scotland. This fishery was normally conducted in areas and during a period in which it is now prohibited to fish by the only means of ensuring the capture of the sprats, namely pair trawling. As pair trawling was a chief means of catching herring, it was decided to close the fishery by prohibiting this type of fishing. So one side effect of a measure designed to protect herring has been the virtual closure of a sprat fishery. Much the same has also taken place off the South-West of England where there has been an areal prohibition on the catching of mackerel via prohibition on the means of capture. In this case the species that have been denied to a market which exists to accept them have been pilchards and horse mackerel.
So closures whether by area or by season may have generally beneficial effects from a marketing point of view but may on occasion lead to the market being deprived of other species.
Mesh size, minimum landing size and prohibition on gear
One of the earliest measures to conserve fish stocks was the introduction of legislation regarding the permitted minimum mesh sizes of nets. Again such measures are generally beneficial from a marketing point of view in that they are usually associated with a minimum landing size per species. As the market for fish has developed, there has been a gradual move towards a preference for the larger sizes landed. In the United Kingdom this reflects the fact that most of the fish landed is processed in some way before it reaches the consumer. At its most basic this processing takes the form of filleting. Fillets need to be of an acceptable size and this has led to there being very little demand for fish below a certain size. There has been harmonization between the legal landing sizes and the sizes required by the market and to that extent the measures have been compatible.
Care must, however, be taken that mesh sizes do not increase to such an extent that particular sizes of a species are no longer landed. British vessels operating in the Norwegian sector of the North Sea are presently utilizing nets with meshes 15 to 20 percent bigger than in the remainder of the North Sea. One of the noticeable effects of this has been the marked reduction in the smaller sizes landed. Whilst this may be no bad thing from a conservation point of view, one of the growth areas in the market in recent years has been in the demand for quick frozen individual fillets which calls for smaller sizes of fish. These sizes have been virtually absent from the catches of vessels using the bigger mesh nets.
One of the areas of contention with regards to mesh sizes and gear in the British industry in recent years has been the shellfish sector. Scientific advice led to the adoption of 35 mm mesh nets for shrimps (Pandulus borealis) and the outcome has been the virtual disappearance of the North Sea shrimp fishery for whose catches there once existed a buoyant market. In the prawn (Nephrops norvegicus) fishery there has been much debate surrounding the use of ‘lifters’ or strengthening bags to lift the cod end. Vessels fishing for Nephrops are permitted to use a 70 mm cod end mesh as opposed to the 80 mm required for finfish. A by-catch was introduced for the Nephrops boats so that no more than half their catch by weight could consist of finfish. This has in all probability led to an increase in the volume of fish being discarded for which a ready market exists, but it does demonstrate the difficulties of not only making management measures compatible with the markets' requirements, and with each other, when one type of fishing activity infringes upon another.
Restriction on fishing vessel entry
In recent years there has been only one fishery in which the British Government introduced a system of restrictive licensing. This was the Isle of Man herring fishery and the size of the permitted offtake was such that the vessels granted licences were easily able to catch the total allowable catch in a way suitable to the market. The only other restriction on vessels implemented in the United Kingdom was a ceiling on the number of purse seiners and freezer trawlers permitted to fish for herring and mackerel. As this restriction was introduced to prevent any additional catching power from joining the fleet, it did not deprive the existing vessels in these categories from pursuing the fisheries they chose. Again there was not a discernible impact on the marketing of the species involved.
Restriction by per man or per vessel quotas
One of the main means of managing fisheries in the United Kingdom has been through the “per man” or more lately the “per vessel” quota. The concept of the per man quota has been traditional in the Scottish fleet and reflects the fact that the method of crew remuneration was and indeed is based on a share system. Under the system the crew are allocated a share of the vessel's gross earnings and this is then divided equally amongst the crew members. It was perhaps natural, therefore, that the early attempts at management which were voluntarily introduced by the herring fishermen themselves should reflect the practices of the day. The per man system attempted to achieve an equitable result for all those prosecuting the fishery. It was also thought that, once the requirements of the market could be ascertained, management would become a matter of dividing the requirements of the market by the number of fishermen participating in the fishery. Thus not only was the system thought to be equitable to those participating in the fishery, but it could be utilized as a means of ensuring that the supply delivered to the market was broadly in line with the level of demand prevailing.
In more recent years this approach has been adopted by the Government in its attempt to manage various fisheries such as herring, mackerel and haddock. In the case of mackerel, to facilitate enforcement the quota is now fixed on a per vessel basis. Another change in the recent past has been the introduction of fortnightly quotas for mackerel. This was specifically introduced to overcome some of the marketing problems that had become apparent in the operation of the weekly quota system.
Although the implementation of a per man or per vessel quota enables the market's requirements to be met provided they are known, it can result in temporary surpluses or shortages. Fixing the quota in terms of a period of a week may result in the market being over or under supplied. If, for example, many of the vessels participating in the fishery are successful in catching their permitted quota in the early part of the week, this can result in a temporary over-supply situation. And the converse of this is that towards the end of the week or quota period the market tends to be under-supplied.
Apart from this, one of the potential problems of a weekly quota system is that it may actively discriminate against certain markets. It was well known to Scottish fishermen that there was a ready market for their mackerel catches in Denmark, but the size of the weekly quota was such that it was barely viable for vessels to take their quota to the Danish market. Accepting that the problem could not be overcome by merely increasing the permitted weekly quota, the solution adopted was to introduce a system whereby a vessel could in any one week land up to two week's quota provided, of course, that no fishing took place in the remainder of the quota period. Thus by amending the quota system it was possible to exploit a new market. But even this system had inherent in it some potential difficulties and especially the difficulties that would result for the market if most of the vessels were able to catch their permitted double quota in the early part of the first week of the quota period. This would result in a glut in the early part of the quota period with some fish remaining unsold followed by a severe shortage in the latter part of the quota period. A possible solution is to divide the catching fleet into two sectors, permitting one to commence fishing a week earlier than the other. This system was used with some success in the summer herring fishery off the West Coast of Scotland this year.
The type of pulse fishing these management measures encourages has implications for the marketing of the catch. Catching a week's or two week's quota in one night obviously raises the question of qualitiy and acceptability if a vessel has to wait several days before discharging the catch. The fact that a weekly quota system for herring and mackerel and a two-weekly quota system for mackerel can exist without adversely affecting the quality of the fish is a reflection of the fleet's investment in means of preserving their catches. All of the Scottish purse seine vessels that pursue herring or mackerel are now fitted with either chilled or refrigerated seawater tanks that enable them to retain the fish on board without the quality deteriorating. To remain viable without destroying the stocks the vessels had to catch their quotas in the shortest possible time. But to ensure that their fish could be sold, substantial investment in on-board freezing was necessary. This in turn made the operation of a two-weekly quota system possible. A further development of this might be a sectoral system whereby vessels are allocated a quota for the entire fishery in advance of the fishery. The marketing problems inherent in such a system are, however, obvious.
The per man or per vessel quota systems create problems for fishing vessels without adequate on-board storage capacity. Vessels which have traditionally boxed and iced their herring and mackerel on board have been faced with the prospect of there being alternative better quality supplies available. And as these are primarily summer fisheries, unless a quick discharge can be obtained, then it is unlikely that the fish will meet the necessary quality specifications.
In the case of demersal species such as haddock which have been managed on a per-man per-week basis, there is no comparable difference between quality as all such fish is boxed and iced on board the fishing vessel. Nevertheless, some of the same problems that emerged in the pelagic fisheries have occurred, resulting in an uneven supply of the species to the market. When fish is to be found many vessels are likely to take their quota in the first few days of the quota period, causing shortages in the latter part. This outcome does at least have a beneficial impact on quality as the fish is landed within a few days of capture and unless the market is grossly over-supplied, can be spread over a few days by the processors. But if fish is scarce, then small quantities of fish tend to be landed in the early part of the quota period and surpluses develop towards the end of the period. In the context of the Scottish fleet this exacerbates the problems arising from the traditional weekly pattern of operation. A situation in which vessels have to stay at sea longer in order to catch their quotas also has a detrimental effect on the quality of the fish subsequently landed.
Faced with a quota which restricts the volume of a species a boat can land, the fishermen may make decisions that affect the total marketing picture. Given a limit on the volume of landings, the fishermen will attempt to maximize their revenue by landing the best possible selection and quality of fish. So the best quality will be retained for supply to the market and selections that are thought to be in greatest demand will be retained at the expense of less sought-after species. In most instances this means that the larger fish will be retained and the smaller sizes discarded. This can have a beneficial effect on the market in providing more of the most sought after selections, but may on occasions lead to a scarcity of the smaller sizes. Such practices have implications for the conservation regime whose goals are hardly likely to be achieved if fishermen are continually discarding a high proportion of their catches in order to land a quota of the most sought-after selections.
One of the perverse effects of such a quota is that it may in some circumstances actually increase the level of fishing effort. Quotas are generally established in such a way that they restrict the activities of only part of the fleet. Other vessels will be landing catches below the quotas introduced, but one of the noticeable effects of quotas in recent years is that the vessels which, in a free fishing situation, are landing less than the quota actually increase the level of their fishing effort in an attempt to secure landings equivalent to the quota.
SUMMARY
The majority of the fisheries exploited by the industrialized countries in the northern hemisphere are either fully or over-exploited at the present time. It is therefore necessary that effective fisheries management measures be introduced. But in framing such measures one should bear in mind that marketing is an integral part of the activity of fishing. It must also be recognized that the objectives of management, whether defined as biological or economic, may on occasion be at variance with the requirements of the market. Management measures can have adverse or beneficial effects on the marketing of catches depending upon the circumstances prevailing within the fishery. In general, however, many of the measures introduced and in particular those relating to size of fish landed, have been beneficial to the market. The impact of other measures such as catch quotas is not so certain as they can have a disruptive influence on the market.
Given the complexity of the relationship between management and marketing, it is necessary to consider the implications of managing each stock in relation to the market for that species, taking account of the various circumstances prevalent at that time.
