The new feature-length documentary Ocean brings the seas, their biodiversity, and their people to our screens in a way we’ve never seen before. And its story links to our project, CIBBRiNA, illustrating the power of collaborations which place commercial fishers at their heart.
Stirring music, crystal-clear visuals, and first-hand accounts from artisanal fishers: Ocean is undeniably a technical masterpiece. It invites us to see the ocean through the eyes of people who depend on it for their livelihoods and well-being, as well as through the eyes of other species. Stories of hope are offered, such as the incredible recovery of great whale populations since commercial whaling was banned in the 1980s, and the “spill-over” effect seen in Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) which benefit both biodiversity and small-scale fishers.
Ocean also explores the pressures that commercial fisheries place on marine ecosystems, including the impacts of some bottom-trawling operations. It’s important that we protect vulnerable habitats and Endangered, Threatened, and Protected (ETP) species from high-impact human activities, and to ensure that subsistence fishers can keep feeding their families. But commercial fishing remains essential to providing protein to people around the world. And all over Europe, fleets have made great strides in terms of their management, the selectivity of their gears, and reducing impacts on marine habitats. Ultimately, these fisheries have a critical role to play alongside researchers, environmental organisations, policymakers, and other marine stakeholders in efforts to keep improving the sustainability of fishing.
CIBBRiNA is working to put this into practice. We’re an EU LIFE-funded consortium involving partners and stakeholders from across Europe. Together we are developing an array of practical methods to monitor and mitigate the bycatch (the accidental capture) of Endangered, Threatened, and Protected species such as turtles, dolphins, and rays. And the only way to make sure these methods actually work for fishers – i.e. they are affordable, safe, and reliable, without reducing target catches – is to work with fishers, to understand the complex environments they operate in and to run trials to see which methods are most effective.
We’re focusing our efforts on eight case study fisheries in European waters, both small-scale and large-scale, and comprising gillnets, deep-water and surface longlines, and bottom and pelagic trawls. Our fisheries are diverse by design, because when it comes to bycatch mitigation, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Instead, we need to develop a large suite of methods, suitable to use in all kinds of fisheries and to minimise the bycatch of all kinds of ETP species (after all, a porpoise behaves very differently and has very different physiological needs to a porbeagle!).
So, what does CIBBRiNA’s collaboration with fishers look like on a day-to-day basis? Read on for an example…
Ultimately, it’s fishers who spend most time at sea, and whose livelihoods (and lives) depend on being able to work safely and effectively onboard their vessels. Their insights and technical knowledge are irreplaceable pieces of the puzzles of bycatch mitigation and other sustainability challenges – just as food from the sea is an irreplaceable part of diets in Europe and the rest of the world. Fisheries and marine ecosystems can flourish together, so long as fishers are given the voice and capacity to help achieve this.
(Banner image credit: Bram Pronk)