White Fish: Ireland

(asked on 15th January 2015) - View Source

Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what recorded number of sea bass were discarded in the (a) Irish and (b) Celtic Sea by Irish vessels in each of the last five years.


Answered by
George Eustice Portrait
George Eustice
This question was answered on 22nd January 2015

Under long standing Irish national measures to protect bass stocks their commercial fishing vessels are not permitted to land bass for sale, which means a degree of discarding of bass by-catch from mixed fishing activity will occur. We have no data available to us, however, on the level of such discards by Irish vessels.

For UK vessels we have discard estimates for the last five years combined for the Irish and Celtic Seas. These relate to otter trawlers, netters and beam trawlers, based on the numbers of sampled trips (see table (b)). We do not sample hook and line boats although these report a sizeable fraction of bass landings in these areas, as survival rates for discarded bass from commercial rod-and line or hand-line boats (under 10 metre inshore vessels) are considered potentially relatively high.

(a) Numbers (thousands) and weight (tonnes) landed and discarded for sampled fleets (otter, nets, beam) in Irish and Celtic Seas, raised to fleet landings for each gear, based on at-sea observer sampling by the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (Cefas).

Number '000s

2009

2010

2011

2012

2013

Mean

Landed

48

36

29

39

30

36

Discarded

8

9

10

10

4

8

% discarded

14

20

25

21

11

18

Tonnes

2009

2010

2011

2012

2013

Mean

Landed

107

58

71

94

80

82

Discarded

3

3

4

6

2

3

% discarded

3

5

5

6

2

4

(b) Number of trips sampled, Irish and Celtic Seas

No. trips sampled

2009

2010

2011

2012

2013

Total

Beam trawls

1

1

2

Netters

4

4

16

12

10

46

Otter trawls

23

20

21

21

12

97

Grand Total

28

24

38

33

22

145

Reticulating Splines