ICES Workshop on Innovative Fishing Gear (WKING) (with contributions of Jochen Depestele, Heleen Lenoir)

The EU Commission (EU DG-MARE) seeks ICES advice on the progress that has been made, or impact arising from innovative gears within EU waters. This advice should assess the benefits for, or negative effects on, marine ecosystems, sensitive habitats and selectivity. Specifically, and to the extent possible, the advice sought should provide information on what kind of innovative gears are being used, their objective, their technical specificities and the im-pact on both target species, non-target species and the environment in which they had been de-ployed. In response to the EU DG-MARE request on the progress and impact that has been made in innovative gear use within EU waters, ICES advises that EU adopt the definition of “Innovative gear” as provided in the report for the Workshop on Innovative Fishing Gear (WKING). In ad-dition, through the work in WKING, the international expert group has also identified rigorous approaches and methodologies to assess different levels of innovation and provide insight for possible adoption or approval of use. According to WKING, an innovation is considered as “any new ideas, creative thoughts, new imag-inations in the form of technology or method” that breaks into the market or society. It takes place through the provision of more effective products, processes, services, technologies, or business models that are made available to markets, governments and society. Therefore, an innovation is something original and more effective and, as a consequence, new that "breaks into" the market or society. Thus, an innovative fishing gear is a gear or a significant component of the gear that has not been used commercially and/or that is sufficiently different from the baseline in the current European Regulations, or in the absence of them, different from the commonly used gear in the specific sea basin (area) in EU waters. For a specific challenge within a fishery, a successful innovation provides a more ideal solution than what previously was available, i.e. the baseline or standard gear. In EU fisheries, baseline standards are derived either from existing technical measures specified in the European Regula-tions or from unregulated, commonly used commercial practice (e.g. groundgears) and consist of objectives and measurable parameters. Examples of these parameters are mesh sizes for both active gear and passive nets, particular gear specifications, minimum conservation reference sizes for target and bycatch species, closed or restricted areas, as well as conservation measures to mitigate catches of sensitive species. A framework to objectively assess the performance of an innovative fishing solution in a specific fishery is provided by WKING using catch efficiency, selectivity, and impact on the environment as main “Criteria of Assessment” (CA), as well as other additional, and sometimes indirect or peripheral effects; e.g. energy consumption, greenhouse gas emission, and marine contamina-tion. Moreover, the “Complexity” and “Technological Readiness Level” (TRL) of each innovative fish-ing gear are proposed as parameters for evaluating the suitability, readiness, and potential adop-tion in a specific EU fishery. For each CA, an innovation matrix that allowed identifying the most relevant innovations for the objectives of the European fishery policy was conceived. Full and objective assessment of the effect based on these criteria helps determine whether a specific innovation is beneficial compared to the baseline gear.

Depending on the expected potential impact on the performance improvement, compared to the baseline (conventional fishing gear), each CA was scored as incremental, transformative, disrup-tive, or negative, while the technology and/or methods were evaluated by the readiness, assessed by the Technology Readiness Level (TRL) as low, medium, or high. The use of TRLs enables consistent, uniform evaluation of technical maturity across different types of technology.
For each CA, an innovation matrix was conceived to allow identification of the innovations that appear to be most relevant to the objectives of the European policies.
The work carried out includes an innovative fishing gear catalogue with 42 factsheets that de-scribes fishing gear innovations tested in the main EU sea-basins. The CA analysis was con-ducted within a small group of fisheries scientists. Conclusions drawn within the WKING report must therefore take this narrow focus into account, especially when extrapolating conclusions into industrial or commercial settings.