Research project Support for the fishery measures in the Belgian part of the North Sea
General introduction
Which commercial fishing activities take place in the areas that Belgium wants to protect as underwater habitat, and by extension in the entire Belgian part of the North Sea (BPNS)? This research is performed in the frame of the European Habitats Directive and the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (EU-MSFD), coupled to potential soil protection measures. In a previous project, ILVO and RBINS already provided extensive scientific advice to the FPS Environment - Marine Environment Service for the concrete demarcation of three zones to be protected in the N2000 area Flemish Banks, where normally all bottom-disturbing activities - and therefore mainly fish trawling – will be prohibited. The follow-up project VISNAT3 focuses on the socio-economic context of fishing in these zones in relation to the rest of the Belgian waters over the period 2007-2022.
Research approach
The commercial fishing activities were mapped spatially and temporally, both in terms of effort (number of fishing hours), relative area fished (SAR) and yield (in kilos and euros), as well as the fishing gear used. In summary, the BPNS has an intensive fishing activity, with the Netherlands as the most important player with on average 66% of the effort and 80% of the landings in weight and monetary value. Belgian vessels performed 31% of the fishing hours and 17% of the landings, while France came in third with only 1% of the total effort and landings. The most commonly used fishing gears in the BPNS were pulse trawl, beam trawl, shrimp trawl, seine net and otter trawl as mobile fishing gear, in addition to a limited share of passive fishing gear. In general, downward trends in landings were observed in the BPNS, which is comparable to the downward trends in Dutch waters. This mainly reflects the successive changes that have taken place in the Dutch fleet, including a ban on pulse trawling and a large-scale program that has seen quite a few Dutch vessels decommissioned in recent years.
Relevance/Valorization
The relevance of this mapping exercise is high: the proposed management zones together represent approximately 10% of the BPNS area. If we scale up our results, on average 8% of the total effort and 13% of the total value of landings in the BPNS came from these three management areas. This socio-economic study forms an important part (a delegate act) in the application for bottom protection measures to the EU Commission. The proposed protection measures are now included in the proposal of the marine spatial plan 2026-2034, but are still under negotiation with the Member States (European procedures, EU Regulation No. 1380/2013) regarding the Common Fisheries Policy. ILVO provides the necessary scientific support to the Marine Environment Service during these negotiation procedures.
