Co-designing the Principles for Defining Low Impact Fishing

Tender description

In the recent Fisheries White Paper the UK Government outlines a desire for an efficient but sustainable fishing industry with technological advances having driven greater efficiency, such as where modern smaller boats have been able to catch more fish than they have previously, existing approaches to considering sustainability may no longer have their original utility. As the UK leaves the European Union and takes back control of its waters in a new era of fisheries governance, there is distinct opportunity to consider new criteria for defining ‘low impact fishing’, and to replace current definitions used for fishing vessels, such as the ‘under 10 metre’ categorisation, while considering what low impact fishing means across the commercial fleet and recreational sector. This invitation to tender is for an original piece of work to develop a framework of principles for low impact fishing, and to agree the processes for applying them. The scope of this work extends only to England for operational reasons, but it is recognised the outputs may be of interest at a UK-wide scale and beyond.