Industry-led fishing gear development under the new European Union Common Fisheries Policy

With the reform of the European Union (EU) Common Fisheries Policy and the implementation of the Landing Obligation the ability of the fishing industry to adjust the selectivity of their gears is more than ever important in determining the revenue of fisheries. This is due to the change from landings- to catch-based fisheries management, where unwanted catches of regulated species now have to be landed and counted against the quota. Moreover, as the quantity and composition of unwanted catch varies with type of fishing gear used, fishing areas, season, fishing practice and quota availability, changes to the selectivity of the gears will be needed at the vessel level. This implies that a larger number of specialized selective gears need to be available to the different fisheries. Such an extensive development and testing of selective gears is difficult to achieve under the traditional process for gear development under the current EU fisheries management system. Therefore, this study investigates the potential of an industry-led process for identifying issues, and for development and testing of gear solutions as a way to provide the necessary tool-box of more specialized gears. Having industry lead the gear development process allows testing numerous fishing gears in parallel, as well as establishing a real commercial development and testing phase prior to expensive scientific trials. Moreover, this parallel development of different gear solutions allows for quickly filtering the most promising ones. Key steps of such an industry-led gear development process were investigated during this study, such as the possibility for industry to collect selectivity data on the gears tested, or what type of gears can this process produce. This PhD thesis consists of a synopsis and four papers.