GIFS Activity 2.3 Fishing activity past and present

Objectives

There have been ongoing initiatives to catalogue, quality control, permanently store and/or redistribute historical data of formal and centralized reports on sea fisheries in the eligible area (e.g. Engelhard, 2005; Lescrauwaet et al., 2010; …). The main aim of this activity is to draw further on and broaden existing initiatives to provide a longer term perspective on the current and historical importance of inshore fisheries to coastal communities in the eligible area of the southern North Sea and Channel in terms of volume of landings, economic value and direct employment and their relative importance in the sector as a whole (including offshore fisheries).

Through an inventory of data sources and subsequent digitization, quality control, standardization and integration of historical data (depending on data availability and quality) this activity wants to:

• Construct a common view of inshore fisheries and use a historical reference to underline its historical importance and/or future potential as a source of local and fresh food, employment, economic resource.
• Map the importance of local diversity and trends in inshore fisheries within the region.

What specific questions do we want to answer in this activity?

• How did direct employment in inshore fisheries change over time?

• How did economic value, volume and composition of landings of inshore fisheries change over time? Which species were most landed by inshore fisheries? How are species of inshore fisheries valued?

• How do the trends and issues above relate to those in the fisheries sector as a whole?

• What are the differences/resemblances with different partner regions?

• What information sources are available to document the historical relevance of inshore fisheries in the study area from the parameters described above? (metadata-inventory)

Method & Materials

Of particular use for this activity are datasets collected in a consistent way over a number of decades. However, historical time series are relatively scarce, especially for earlier periods. Moreover, if data exist, other problems often arise in terms of access, availability, data policy restrictions, inappropriate formats or insufficient reliability or quality. Different institutes have been contacted with a stock take on data-availability for inshore fisheries landings, value of landings and employment. This stock take contains questions concerning available datasets/publications, how far do these data go back in time, are these data in digital or paper format.

The institutions listed below, are key organisations in relation time-series on fisheries:

Belgium

Sea Fisheries Service (DVZ)

Institute for Agricultural and Sea Fisheries Research (ILVO)

State archives

Heritage Library Hendrik Conscience

The Netherlands

Central Statistics Office (CBS)

IMARES

WUR

Agricultural Economics Institute (LEI)

Library of Middelburg

United Kingdom

Marine Management Organisation (MMO)

Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (CEFAS)

Inshore Fisheries Conservation Authorities (IFCA’s)

France

IFREMER + Bibliothèque La Pérouse

Bureau des statistiques des pêches et de l’aquaculture (BSPA)

Fisheries observatories Brittany

Also structured databases that allowed advanced querying on the basis of specific search terms (e.g. ‘fisheries statistics’) were screened for datasources on fisheries in Belgium, the Netherlands, France and UK (this is on-going work):

• Integrated Marine Information System (IMIS): http://www.vliz.be/imis/imis.php?module=ref
• Antilope Catalogus: http://anet.ua.ac.be/services.phtml?service=opacantilope
• Archive institutionnelle de l’Ifremer (Archimer): http://archimer.ifremer.fr
• Wageningen Library: http://library.wur.nl/desktop/direct/
• UK national statistics: http://www.statistics.gov.uk

Results

For each of the identified data sources (paper format and/or digital for recent years) from the stock take, a detailed overview table with information on available parameters/variables for inshore fisheries (landings, value of landings or employment), unit of measurement, temporal coverage/resolution, spatial coverage/resolution, taxonomic and other resolutions, physical location of datasource, availability is available.

Table 1 and 2 give an overview of the datasources for the historical data in fig. 1 and 2 and provide all definitions of inshore fisheries used within these sources.