Environment Food and Rural Affairs written question – answered at on 18 March 2010.
Andrew Rosindell
Shadow Minister (Home Affairs)
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
(1) what research his Department is undertaking on risks posed by fisheries to porpoises and dolphins in UK waters;
(2) whether his Department is funding research into possible methods of mitigating cetacean bycatch;
(3) whether his Department is funding research into alternative fishing technology with the aim of eliminating cetacean bycatch.
Huw Irranca-Davies
Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) (Marine and Natural Environment)
The UK constantly assesses the risks posed to cetaceans from fisheries through our monitoring programme onboard fishing vessels, undertaken by the Sea Mammal Research Unit (SMRU). We have used this project to identify which fisheries areas pose the greatest risk, and have moved the focus of our monitoring in order to investigate those fisheries of greatest concern.
The UK is committed to avoiding the by-catch of cetaceans wherever possible; we have, in total, spent over £2 million to date since 2000 on a range of measures to understand better, and so reduce, the incidental by-catch of cetaceans.
As part of a five-year research contract between SMRU and DEFRA that ended in 2008, research was conducted into modifications to fishing gear to reduce the by-catch of small cetaceans. This research produced inconclusive results and highlighted the need for more effective deterrents to prevent capture.
The focus of our current research and monitoring is to identify those fisheries responsible for high levels of cetacean by-catch and to test acoustic deterrents that are effective at preventing cetacean bycatch in these fisheries.
SMRU are extensively testing, on behalf of DEFRA, a new, more powerful acoustic deterrent device that we believe will address the problems of safety and effectiveness encountered with other acoustic deterrent devices, and significantly reduce the number of cetaceans caught in fishing gear.
We are committed to finding an acoustic deterrent that is both safe for fishers to use, and effective at deterring cetaceans from fishing gear, and we eagerly await the results of this research, due in April next year.
The annual reports the UK submits to the European Commission under Council Regulation 812/2004 supply more detail on all of this work and can be found at:
http://www.defra.gov.uk/foodfarm/fisheries/marine/conservation/cetaceans.htm#1
Yes2 people think so
No0 people think not
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