Every now and then a project comes along which gets even me excited about the positive direction fisheries management is taking in different parts of the world. Project Inshore is an exciting opportunity for England’s inshore sector fishers, authorities, markets and NGOs, such as WWF, to collaborate and innovate to ensure that the future of inshore fishing is sustainable.
This project’s aim is to develop bespoke sustainability reviews for each of the Inshore Fisheries and Conservation Authorities, these will no doubt be a fantastic resource to the fisheries. These reviews will cover a whole range of issues relating to the findings from the MSC pre-assessment part of the project. The detailed research will be able to identify pockets of work to improve the sustainability of inshore fisheries from data gathering and monitoring of the species caught, to the impacts of different gear types and much more.
This project joins a small raft of similar projects being undertaken on inshore fleets globally to assess them against MSC standards. I personally have been quizzed about this project by colleagues from around the world, so am looking forward to sharing the process and the findings.