Every year, more than a thousand marine mammals are bycaught in UK static fishing nets - gear commonly used to target species like Red mullet, Bass, Whiting and Hake. Bycatch is a serious welfare and conservation issue, with a number of different protected species being bycaught every year, and Harbour porpoises and Common dolphins being bycaught at levels that are impacting their populations.
To understand the scale of the bycatch problem, the UK supports two important initiatives: the Bycatch Monitoring Programme (BMP) and the Cetacean Strandings Investigation Programme (CSIP). These programmes provide important monitoring data that help us to understand the extent of bycatch, but that is not enough.
About 1,000 porpoises and Common dolphins die in UK fishing gear each year. We don’t have data for bycatch rates of other whales and dolphins. We now have a rare opportunity to end porpoise bycatch. The Marine Management Organisation (MMO), a government body, have put out a call for evidence on management options to reduce Harbour porpoise bycatch in English waters. The MMO are currently considering new gillnet (static nets that sit in the water column and capture passing marine wildlife) bycatch measures for the Southern North Sea and Bristol Channel Approaches marine protected areas (MPAs) as well as wider areas.
Bycatch isn’t confined to MPAs. In fact, the highest-risk areas – where static net fisheries and porpoises overlap - often fall outside of MPAs. It’s essential to implement broad, population-level solutions that address bycatch wherever it occurs. MPAs provide a valuable space for tackling non-lethal human pressures on marine life and, when combined with robust bycatch prevention across wider waters, they can help ensure that Harbour porpoises and other protected species have the safe, healthy habitats they need to recover and thrive.
The UK must establish clear bycatch reduction targets and ambitious timeframes to meet its legal obligations to minimise and where possible eliminate bycatch. An analysis of which measures will be sufficient to meet those requirements will be required, for each region, to make an informed decision about which options will be effective at reducing bycatch by the required amount in the required timeframe.
The most effective measures would include a transition away from static net use—a fishing method responsible for the highest levels of porpoise and dolphin bycatch. This would not only benefit Harbour porpoises but also greatly reduce bycatch of other protected marine species, including Common dolphins, Grey seals and seabirds, such as Guillemots.
The MMO has proposed six options (time-area closures, effort limitations, dynamic closures, mandatory acoustic deterrent devices, voluntary gear modifications and bycatch monitoring and reporting). But porpoise bycatch cannot be prevented by implementing one option alone. Options such as time-area closures and gear switching—particularly if implemented together across the full range of the Harbour porpoise management units—could significantly reduce bycatch. The UK currently includes three porpoise management units, in the North Sea, West Scotland and Celtic and Irish Seas.
Such a transition will require:
Given the urgency of the situation, monitoring – one of the options under consideration - should be implemented at levels that provide robust data, in parallel with mitigation. Monitoring data will be essential for assessing the effectiveness of new measures and adapting the approaches taken, as needed.
The UK Parliamentary Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (EFRA) Committee recommended in a 2023 report titled ‘Protecting marine mammals in the UK and abroad’ that the Government introduce ‘mandatory bycatch monitoring, phased in over several years, with smaller vessels given extra time and, where necessary, financial support to meet their obligations – requesting an action plan to achieve this, with targets and milestones, by December 2023’. The report also stated that ‘efforts to tackle bycatch need to be stepped up’ and ‘Action should begin in the high-risk fleets .. as soon as practicable, and at the very latest be in place by June 2024’.
It will be important to work closely with the other government departments, including Natural Resources Wales (NRW) and Inshore Fisheries and Conservation Authorities (IFCAs), to ensure that the appropriate measures are implemented throughout the management areas, including within six 6 nautical miles of the coast.
Preventing Harbour porpoise bycatch is a challenge and will require difficult decisions to be made. But fishers don’t want to catch protected species, and the urgent introduction of robust new measures are needed for the government to fulfil its legal duties to prevent protected species bycatch. Given the population impacts and legal requirements, implementation of robust measures should be prioritised and ambitious timelines set.
This could be the first real opportunity in more than 30 years to develop and implement a plan to end the greatest threat facing Harbour porpoises in English waters. The time to act is now.
Sarah Dolman is a Senior Ocean Campaigner at Environmental Investigation Agency
The opinions expressed in this blog are the authors' and not necessarily those of the wider Link membership.
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