Electrofishing for Razor Clams Scientific Trial: 1 February 2024-31 January 2025

7. MD Coastal Operations

MD Coastal Operations continued to employ a risk-based approach to the inspection of vessels participating in the trial and deployed land and sea-based resources to monitor these vessels.

As per the trial terms and conditions, the owner of each vessel participating in the trial is entirely responsible for the purchase, installation and maintenance costs of all fishing apparatus, generating gear, and monitoring equipment specified by MD as necessary to participate in the trial. This includes a bespoke Remote Electronic Monitoring (REM) device which is proving a highly valuable tool for both scientific data collection purposes and compliance management. All MD coastal offices and the Marine Protection Vessel fleet have access to live positional data of the vessels to aid inspections (subject to the 3G coverage in a vessel’s area of operation).

In trial year 2024-2025 Officers undertook 74 inspections both by inspectors on land and where compliance was found to be very good at 96.3%. In relation to daily landed catch limits, a total of 61 landings were weighed at the landing port, with 3 infringements found. 9 vessels were boarded at sea, not all boardings were upon completion of a fishing day, with some vessels being boarded at the time of the first dive.

The REM data is received at the Fully Documented Fishery Unit (FDF), from where it is analysed remotely and verified for compliance. Going forward the REM data will be received by Anchorlab and stored there, to be analysed remotely and verified for compliance. This change is due to FDF system becoming redundant.

During the 2024-25 year, 1680 trips were analysed. Compliance with the requirements of the trial’s Terms and Conditions was found to be high. Post landings checks by the FDF unit identified a total of 13 minor breached of terms and conditions and these were dealt with by the way of verbal rebrief, email and advisory letter. Eight minor breaches were relating to fishing out with classified waters (>100m). Reasons for these breaches, include fishing between a site boundary and shoreline but this site has since been expanded to cover a much larger area of ground, including the area the vessel fished. Fishing in a declassified site after an extended break from fishing, where the site had previously been classified and other vessel errors with oversight on site boundaries. One minor breach was noted for REM not fully functioning and this was dealt with by way of verbal and written rebriefs and a warning.