Priority 2: Environmental Working Group Meeting Minutes

North Thames Fisheries Local Action Group (NTFLAG) Environmental Monitoring Working Group Meeting
Tuesday 4th July 2-4pm| Meeting location LG15, 26 Bedford Way

Attendees: Paul Gilson (Leigh-On-Sea Fisher),Richard Eves (Leigh-On-Sea Fisher),Stuart Hetherington (CEFAS), Amy Pryor (TEP program manager), Anna Patel (NTFLAG Fisheries Animateur), Kesella Scott-Somme (NTFLAG project coordinator).

General Discussion

Freshwater has been shown to have impacts on many species and to change where they are and how many there are. But we haven’t had any freshwater coming in recently so there must be something else to blame for the declines and movement of certain species, particularly plankton. Maybe freshwater influxes kick off some vital processes; and it has been too dry for these to happen?

Ideas

Super Sewer/Tideway

We might want to look at/think about the effects of the new super sewer, as we will likely see declines in nutrients, which could be problematic, but chemicals (e.g. endocrine disruptors such as the birth control pill) may lessen. This is all likely to have large effects on the Estuary.

Existing Data project

CarolineGarrowayis putting together a project combining accounts from fishers, mapping what’s been happening in the Thames and collating historic data sets.

The Marine Conservation Society was interested in a GIS project to visually represent changes in the Thames.

CEFAS would potentially be open to doing a project to pool existing data together. But would need someone to do it and match funding.

Plankton Monitoring Project

Introduction

Fishermen present for this meeting have noted many changes in fish and shellfish abundance and distribution and think it may be connected with changes they have observed in plankton availability.

CEFAS do not do plankton monitoring on the Thames and no one present is aware of any Thames scale plankton monitoring.

Plankton is a major driver and it could be interesting to do a project on this.

Issues

We need to think about what is achievable for the available money, for plankton we need amulti-yearplankton survey of at least 5 years for it to begin to tell you anything.

If you want to do this you need to make it applicable, i.e. look at how it is affecting the species you are interested in, e.g. cockles.- You need to think about your questions and what you are actually trying to find out. And we need funding allocated to where that data is goingin order toeffect change at the end, there is no point monitoring or analyzing something if you have no money left to put in solutions, once you have worked out the problem. This has happened in the past where fishermen have been left frustrated because something has been worked out but there is not enough time/money to do anything about it.

Ideas

National plankton survey could be helpful, studies suggest that plankton is moving due to changing climates and fish could be following this. In the Thames climate change could be important or could be to do with freshwater movements etc. If we know what is happening with plankton movement we may be able to predict loss and gain of species in an area and start processes for adjustments of quotas early, especially Since we’re leaving the EU; we might be able to get fisheries management based on science which could result in our fishing fleets being allowed to be more flexible and nimble when responding to population changes.

  • Can we use satellite data to monitor plankton?
  • Could we combine with project below to get fishers to do regular Secchi disk checks to inform us of where plankton is?

CEFAS Thornback ray project

Introduction

Remote electronic monitoring system for boats, cost between 4&8 thousand GBP. These usually comprise GPS, several cameras and a net sensor and are traditionally used to monitor discards and when a boat is steaming/fishing. We are interested in adapting this gear for use monitoring environmental changes in the Thames. E.g. fish sex and size, which can be done by showing a subsample to the camera and measuring, so no need to record data and makes minimal extra work for fishermen. CEFAS has been trialing some of this in the Southwest to help validate reports from fishermen. Stuart is currently looking at match funding for this and has a conservation body and a supermarket interested. Supermarket may be interested in being involved as good PR for them and can showcase that they support local sustainable fisheries. Stuart is also speaking to the Kent and Essex IFCA to understand what they’re doing so we aren’t duplicating.

Details on running the project:

-We need 5 vessels to get meaningful data fast enough.

-We can adapt the kit to any size boat and crew (all kit is water and weather proof)

-Paul and Richard both have boats which could potentially be used, we need to start talking to anyone else who might be brought around to this (within the NTFLAG area). (Potential to roll it out to Greater Thames Fisheries Action Group)

-How do we make sure fishing is regular and repetitive, as is needed for clear results, vs. needs of fishers to be flexible with availability etc.?

Ideas

  • Can we incentivise, as sending fishermen to areas we know there is no fish so we can have a complete dataset might be difficult: scientific quota from MMO? But we don’t want to encourage unlimited/indiscriminate fishing.
  • Could we get fishermen to do regular Secchi disk checks to feed into plankton project?
  • Could we sell extra fish to go into project: Seafish do something like this by putting a levy of theirfishwhich goes back into their projects? Would MMO go for this? We could put this back intothe FLAG projects.Could we do this for thornback ray? Any fish they kept put a levy on for the scheme.
  • Put market price of fish up a bit because it is local, and then put 10% back into the pot for the project to use?
  • Legacy, don’t know whenthis endsbut we want monitoring to go on beyond this. We will write this into the project as a legacy recommendation and into the FLAG.

Other ideas

Is there another big economic driver which would be more achievable to show change at this timescale?Plaice have moved further out into thenorth sea- see from a fisheries point of view that’s a project to do, travelling 6 hours to catch fish adds to environmental impacts and also costs more in terms of fuel etc., so working out and fixing a problem like that might be helpful.

Actions

  • Funding bid by end of July from Stuart, Anna going to check.
  • What is a scientific quota like and how do we validate that: ask MMO.

Any Other Business

  • Would like to see a fishermen cooperative where a portion of fish/cocklers into a common pot for projects like this, have been told cocklers may not be keen to sign up.
  • There hasn’t been a steady supply of fish because of the intensiveness of fishing, we need to fish sustainably and then we can get amore steadyflow.
  • The price of fish can be very low because of blackfish flooding the market and driving prices down.This could be helpful in getting supermarkets to buy in to projects such as the thornback ray project, but we do need to bereally carefulwith all of this that we make sure everything is legal.FLAG making a market for local fish would be a major achievement.
  • Idea so faristo have universities involved in some of these projects so it becomes part of the training for university courses and money goes to the organizations running the projects to utilize.
  • Citizen science/more shore based/easier access.