R042 - The social and economic benefit of commercial and recreational fishing
Updated 16 January 2019
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1. Requirement overview
1.1 Requirement detail
Presently the MMO collects and publishes data in relation to commercial fisheries and landings. This data covers: species caught, landed weight, fishing gear type, port of landing, vessel nationality, vessel length, catch value and catch location.
As such, this dataset is detailed and covers all commercial fish landings. This is combined with satellite based Vessel Monitoring System (VMS) data to give an idea of spatial distribution of areas of important fisheries for over 12m vessels. Recreational fishing (sea angling) has some limited data collection, though this is not linked to spatial activity information beyond large sea areas, which is less available than for commercial fishing and is derived from surveys.
1.2 MMO use
Marine Planning: An increased level of spatial detail would allow for identification of the most important fisheries, this with more information on economic and social information may then result in specific plan policies that protect these areas.
Marine Conservation: Any additional information in this area could inform impact assessments for Marine Protected Areas.
1.3 External interest
Natural England, Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science
2. Aims and objectives
2.1 Aim
Better understand the social and economic impacts of commercial and recreational fishing.
2.2 Objectives
The objectives to deliver this requirement include to:
- collect additional information on commercial fishing activity to a resolution below ICES rectangle (especially for under 12m vessels)
- to increase our understanding of where sea angling is happening at a more local level and at what scale
- to increase our understanding of the wider social and economic importance of both commercial and recreational fishing
3. Existing evidence
3.1 MMO
The MMO has undertaken a lot of work previously that is relevant. MMO1001 provides useful social and economic data on coastal communities at a fine resolution, whilst MMO1011 provides information on the distribution, trends and value of commercial fisheries in England. MMO1012 provides a catalogue of social and economic data across the board and MMO1035 provides a range of social impacts for fisheries and angling. MMO1060 follows MMO1035 and covers the other sectors covered by marine planning. The MMO also publishes monthly and annual sea fisheries statistics. MMO1129 is an ongoing Defra project involving MMO along with Marine Scotland and the Welsh government looking at Social and Economic impact of Fisheries in a number of case study locations across the UK.
3.2 Academic
There is a considerable amount of work being done on recreational fishing such as Roberts et al 2017 which looked at the total contribution of recreational sea angling to the UK economy as well as at a European level in Hyder et al 2017.
3.3 Other
Cefas holds a wealth of relevant fisheries data on FishDAC and are also responsible for data collection under the European Union Data Collection Framework. Seafish provide [economic information] (http://www.seafish.org/research-economics/industry-economics/fleet-statistics) under the Data Collection Framework.
4. Current activity
The MMO has ongoing responsibility for collecting fishing activity data under the Data Collection Framework. There is also current work looking at improving our data collection for under 10m vessel catches. The MMO has a project looking to map sea angling (MMO1163) beginning early 2019. Defra have a project looking at the Economic and social impacts of fishing sectors on localities (MF0739).
5. Associated evidence requirements
R059 - The baseline social and economic environment local to marine protected areas
R103 - The baseline social environment of English marine plan areas
6. Further details
For more information or to add further research to the existing evidence list please email [email protected]