A Multi-Criteria Framework for the Sustainable Management of Fisheries: a Case Study of UK's North Sea Scottish Fisheries.

In this paper, a sustainability framework with a case application for UK's Scottish fisheries has been developed which integrates aspects related to economic growth, social development, governance, biology, environment, and logistics. Scotland is the centre of UK's commercial fishery sector however it faces challenges such as overexploitation, and changes in the governance structure following Brexit. The contributions of this study are threefold including (i) collecting and analysing primary data gathered from a diverse group of stakeholders in the Scottish fishery sector and scientific community, (ii) prioritising a diverse range of criteria in terms of importance in decision making from industry and scientific community perspectives, (iii) elaboration of the key management objectives in this region within the context of sustainable management of fisheries in the UK.The results of this stakeholders' survey show that the key management objectives are reductions in overexploitation of stocks, inclusive governance, increase in transparency and simplicity of policy measures, reduction in marine litter, and increase in the efficiency of vessels. The analysis also shows that the industry group places a higher importance on socio-economic objectives such as increase in profit and employment compared to the scientific group. On the other hand, the scientific group prioritised the objectives such as reducing discards, bycatch, and impact on seafloor compared to the industry group. This study provides insight for the UK's fisheries sector, and scientific advisory groups for the enhanced implementation of sustainable fisheries management policies.

Scenarios of profitability of western Mediterranean demersal fisheries in an effort control regime.

In 2019 a multiannual plan for Mediterranean demersal fisheries came into force with the objective to reduce the overexploitation of fisheries in the region by implementing effort control regimes. These measures, however, have the potential to adversely impact the local employment and profitability of the fisheries. In this paper, we examine scenarios on the short term and long term levels of economic yield of the sector using the two main drivers of fuel price and employment. Three main scenarios are defined as i) maintaining the average status quo, ii) effort control regimes implemented in the 2019 multiannual plan, and iii) flexible effort control regimes. For each of the aforementioned scenarios, three main fleets and five main conditions are considered, and the results will be compared and contrasted. The results in this paper show that the future rise in fuel price, which is anticipated due to global efforts to reduce emissions, along with the current effort reduction strategies could significantly threaten the sustainable profitability of the sector, and policy measures that could balance this issue should be implemented. Policy interventions and investments should be directed at technological advancements such as modernisation and increasing efficiency of fleet to reduce fuel use, utilisation of highly efficient gear technologies, shortened trips to fishing grounds, and increase in value creation in other parts of the fisheries supply chain to mitigate the serious challenges in terms of local employment and profitability facing the Mediterranean fisheries.