Scrapping your vessel

Decommissioning of fishing vessels has become an unfortunate but necessary tool throughout Europe as one means of reducing the catch effort placed on all commercial species. The poor state of some whitefish stocks is reflected in the annual total allowable catch and quota allocations that Ireland receives every year from the annual TAC negotiations. According to the EU Commission, while various reasons can be blamed for this critical decline, overfishing has been a major contributing factor in each Member State. Whatever the reason, the BIM report “Building a Sustainable Future for Ireland’s Fishing Fleet” reports the decline of available fish is a fact - not just for the shared stocks that the Irish fleet exploits - but equally the case for many stocks where Ireland is allocated a proportion of the total catch.

This report from BIM states that “it is abundantly clear that, decommissioning to date notwithstanding, the catching capacity in key fleet sectors continues to exceed the resources available to Irish vessels. This is exacerbated for certain stocks where the number and catching capacty of vessels greatly exceeds the available resources.” In announcing the introduction of a decommissioning scheme for the Irish fishing fleet, the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries & Food, Mary Coughlan TD said that “clearly the reality facing Ireland’s whitefish sector remains one that can have no expectation of increased catches in te short term. On the contrary, reducing fleet capacity, developing long term management plans, introducing effective technical measures, supplement with strong control and enforcement will drive thinking on fisheries management for many years to come.”

The latest Decommissioning Scheme announced for Ireland has a target to remove 11,140 gross tonnes from Ireland’s capacity - it is expected that this will see the decommissioning of an approximate 70 to 80 vessels from the whitefish fleet with the Scheme placing focus on larger whitefish vessels (polyvalent and beam trawl) over 18m in length. While the Scheme targets larger, older and less safe vessels that are every bit as resource demanding as their modern counterparts, it recognises that there are situations where younger vessels in the fleet can have a significant impact on certan stocks. For that reason, it provides for a lowering of the qualifying age from 15 to 10 years but only in cases where the vessels in question can demonstrate a significant track record of catching and landing key whitefish stocks.