Understanding technological innovation in the Belgian fishery from a regulatory, socio-economic and governance perspective

The Belgian fishing fleet is one of Europe’s smallest, comprising 69 active fishing vessels in 2015 mainly targeting sole (Solea solea) and plaice (Pleuronectes platessa). No less than 79% of the landings are accounted for by beam trawlers, which are known to have a significant impact on benthic ecosystems. Although the fishery shows strong parallels with the neighboring Dutch fishery in terms of target species, fishing grounds and fishing methods, they are also different in many ways. The Dutch fishery has a reputation of high efficiency, innovation, consideration for the environment and a strong entrepreneurial attitude of fishermen. The Belgian fishery, on the other hand, is said to lack these dynamics. Also Belgian fisheries managers and researchers are often tempted to think about the Dutch and Belgian fisheries in these general terms, taking the Dutch fishery as a model. We conducted eight semi-structured interviews with fishermen between January and March 2016 to understand the factors that stimulate and hamper innovation and investment in the Belgian fishery. All these fishermen stated that they considered (and tried out) different alternatives to the traditional heavy beam trawl. They also explicitly expressed to be open to new suggestions and remained on the look for new developments that could potentially improve their fishing practices. The alterations were not of the same scale as investments observed in the Dutch fishery in the past years. However, the results of the interviews suggest that researchers and fisheries managers must reconsider their views on innovation in the Belgian fishery. Although these fishers may not represent the entire Belgian fleet, the findings suggest other reasons than fisher attitude that hamper large innovations in the Belgian fishery. These include a variety of socio-economic, governance and regulatory drivers.