Behind the shine: An appraisal of five years of Danish CCTV trials

Denmark has been the first nation in Europe to promote the use of Fully Documented Fisheries (FDF) through Remote Electronic Monitoring (REM) and CCTV camera systems, and some pilot schemes for monitoring cod catches have been in place since 2008. In theory, such a scheme could supplement and even potentially replace expensive control and monitoring programs; and, when associated to a Catch Quota management system, incentivize positive changes in fishing patterns in a results-based management approach. However, in practice, the technical and institutional challenges remain important hurdles to overcome for the system to be beneficial and reliable. In this paper we investigate the added value on catch information gained over the last five years, and discuss the future of REM as a monitoring program in the context of the future discards ban