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Tech helps keep fishing businesses afloat in Sweden
Next-level management reform required a new tool to facilitate smooth quota trade and transparency: FishRight was the Swedish fleet's answer.
Fishing in Sweden has been evolving. From the first mention of the Landing Obligation, fishermen understood change was coming, and getting management right would be crucial to making this sea-change policy workable for their different fleets. Innovation would be the way forward for ensuring fishing businesses stayed afloat; and that innovation would need to be underpinned with new, wheelhouse-accessible technology that could help deliver a flexible, adaptive – and discard-ban ready – fishery.
From 2015, fishermen and the Swedish Marine and Water Agency (SWaM) worked alongside each other, participating in an effective and communicative co-management process to re-imagine Swedish demersal fishing for future generations. Spearheaded by the Swedish Fishermen’s Producer Organisation (SFPO) and supported by Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) Europe, this collaboration delivered a new way of managing Swedish demersal fisheries, which hit the water in January 2017.
Central to management reform was the ability to trade individual quotas within the fleet and within the year: helping fishermen in both large and small-scale vessels (the latter protected by a quota pool, specifically for the inshore fleet) quickly cover their catch, and bringing new flexibility into the system.
This is where the tech comes in. This core component – of swift, transparent quota transfer – was already central to the country’s pelagic fleet, which has worked with transferable quotas since 2009. For the pelagics, quota trade (helping them cover their full catch, including any risky discard or choke species) was carried out through a new, 24-hour system developed by SWaM with flexible inter-vessel trade and the discard ban in mind: FishRight.
With the introduction of the new demersal management system, and still keen to ensure that management evolution didn’t create additional administrative burdens for busy fishermen, access to the FishRight system was opened to all demersal license holders from January 2017.
So, how does the system work and how has it performed at sea?
‘The system can be accessed 24 hours a day, whenever the fisherman has time. Unlike when we used paper forms, those transferring quota and its recipients can sign an application without ever needing to meet – it’s a really fast, efficient and flexible procedure’ explained SWaM’s Frida Engberg.
‘It’s great to see the system being used; the goal is to make it as easy as possible for fishermen to comply with the Landing Obligation. Co-operation with the fishermen has been very positive and rewarding, and we want to continue our dialogue as we further develop the system.’
Using any device – phones, tablets, laptops - fishermen are able to check out their quota ‘balance’ using the tool, and then apply for quota transfers in order to easily match their fishing opportunities with their actual catches. In this way, the Swedish demersal fleet hopes to side-step many of the choke challenges presented by the Landing Obligation – covering any over-quota species instantly, with just a few clicks on the new system.
‘Adopting this system into our demersal fisheries has been a significant part of the success of our new management system – it was so important that trading quota was hassle-free for the fishermen,’ said Malin Skog at SFPO.
‘The industry here is pleased with how our first year on the water with FishRight has gone, and we’re looking forwards to continuing to work with SWaM on making Sweden’s fisheries as secure and sustainable as possible.’
In future, it’s hoped that the tool can help provide crucial data on fishing activities – giving fishermen and authorities a clear picture of the most traded species, for example – and continue to evolve to become even more immediate and automated. Meanwhile, moving into the second year of the new demersal management system, and with a number of exciting new gear selectivity trials underway within the fleet, Swedish fishermen look set to continue finding new answers to the discard dilemma.