1. A Team Effort to Tackle a Complex Problem
/ MSEAS
The Landing obligation in the North Sea
a University of Tromsø (UiT)
b NRC (Europe) Ltd. UK
* Corresponding author
Charlotte Weber a *, Melania Borit a and John Pope b

2. The Story of a Quest The fellowship
We are on the story here, not on the problem – NO FINISHED PRODUCT
It’s like the ring – without a ring no quest, without a discards ban, no modelling in this case

3. «Discard ban» –Landing Obligation (LO)
EU landing obligation rules from the EUR-lex
Started on the 1st of January 2015 – will be fully implemented by 2019 in all EU member states
“The Ring”

4. The North Sea Case Study
Dutch Beam Trawling fleet in the North Sea
MF decision support framework
Mixed fishery
High discards
Likely experience fishing grid lock – choke species
Data availability
This case study is part of MareFrame
Makes a good lab rat at the same time
Middle Earth – this is the context, the world the ring will be carried through
Picture source:
“Middle Earth”

5. ICES Outstanding achievement award 2012
LO and the North Sea
John Pope
Fisheries modeller
ICES Outstanding achievement award 2012
First it was only John, in MareFrame, it was a relatively disciplinary approach
John has a history of working very well together with the stakholders
Tools of the hobbit is the model – then the other ones came in, bc the hobbit didn’t have enough capacity to fulfill the quest by himself – the team now interdisciplinary
John Pope was awarded with the Outstanding Achievement Award from ICES in 2012 for his great contribution to ICES and to science
“The Ring Bearer”

6. LO and the North Sea - Models
For Decision Support Framework
From R to Excel
To be used by stakeholders
This is the overview of what I am trying to do for Stakeholders under MAREFRAME. I teamed up with Melania and You because red model needs social inputs as well as economic and fisheries inputs to understand fishers behaviour
Green model:
Its Structure should:-
Take Account of Species Interactions and Technical Interactions
Handle the main range of TAC species.
Allow fishing to be changed in realistic ways
Its Outputs should include the important trade offs:-
Species Yield
Fleet Economics
Social implications
Ecosystem Effects
Most of all it MUST BE:-
Transportable, Easy to understand and Responsive.
Orange model:
Broad Requirements as Green Model but with area and size.
Need to include possibility for area closure
Need to include some species as multiple stocks (e.g. Nephrops)
Possible Approach.
Attempt an area and sized based model based upon SMS or similar overall model results. These would then be partitioned by fleet rectangle data and by survey data.
“The Quest & the tools”

7. The Landing Obligations & Questions it Raises
The fishers:
How will fishers react?
What kind of behavior will they show?
What is the probable behaviour?
Compliance / non-compliance?
What is the likely compliance outcome?
The Landings Obligation (LO)
Social Constraints on Behaviour
The introduction of the LO raised certain questions, so we wondered about these things in terms what fishers will do? What behavior they will show and what are the consequences going to be?
“The Quest”

8. The Team Effort – A Journey
 Build a multidisciplinary team for interdisciplinary work
John Pope
The mathematician /
Fisheries modeller
Melania Borit
The lawyer
/ social scientist
Charlotte Weber
The biologist /
marine scientist
Tools of the hobbit is the model – then the other ones came in, bc the hobbit didn’t have enough capacity to fulfill the quest by himself – the team now interdisciplinary
“The Fellowship”

9. The Team Effort – A Journey
The economic/Ecosystem Model
Behavior / Compliance Considerations
Model considers (so far)
Fish Size
Fish age
Fleet
Area
Landings
Value…
WHY fishermen are inclined to break the rules
enormous economic pressure on the industry
certain regulations can only be checked at sea, which is very difficult in practice
complex rules system
limited trust in authorities
limited enforcement capacity
Dutch policy is not strict enough
limits on the industry's willingness to be controlled
* What does the model need to cover? Area, size, species, landings, discards, value, cost. Explain the data sources.
* Present a bit more details of the model. Maybe the stakeholders will be able to use it themselves.
Entrails of the model
Data sources – how to use
Data compression – how to get down to excel, size problem
Talking about the ring with different languages
“The Quest”

10. Drivers for compliance/non-compliance
Self interest
Enforcement
Inducement
Social Pressure
Obligation
Subconscious consideration
Regulations
Economic and biological conditions
The behavior of others
Conviction
Profit
john asked for data about how ppl behaved in other countries that have already implemented LO
BUT we came with this data but still it wasn’t good enough
Many different drivers for compliance  Lias graph and acknowledgements here
BUT That was too complex and then we narrowed it down to only profit as a driver
So now we limited it down to simple scenarios
Examples in the next slide (pic but nice)
“The Quest”
L. ní Aodha, unpublished

11. Where we are now Scenarios: Change in profit Sx: change grounds
S1: BAU
S2: X -X%
S3: … +X%
Sx: change grounds
Change gear (increase mesh size) ?
Exit fishery
Driver
ONLY driver = Profit
Only bahvior = simple fishing strategies
Behavior
“The Quest”

12. The Team Effort – Lessons Learned
John
Melania / Charlotte
Fleet behavior
Wanted a number from the social scientists, something to measure
Wanted economic data which is easily available e.g. profit
Individual behavior Would like to know the drivers of the behavior But only profit is available as measurable data
Social complexity we had hoped for couldn’t be realized
 Came down to simple fishing strategies
“The Quest”

13. The Team Effort – Lessons learned
Agree on a common objective
Open Discussion
Explain where you are coming from
Thinking
Method
Assumptions
“World” / “Culture”
Face-to-face meeting
Open discussion – have an open discussion but also BE open for a discussion
It takes a lot of flipcharts and white boards
“The Quest”

14. The Quest continues…
2016 Riga ASC

15. Charlotte.t.weber@uit.no ● melania.borit@uit.no ● PopeJG@aol.com
Thank You
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The Daily Fish
@saf21esr
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Framework Programme Marie Skłodowska-Curie (MSC) - ITN - ETN programme (project ): 2015 – 2018.
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