Amy Wardlaw, MMO,  ‘The MMO is seeking to continue work with the fishing industry on the Fully Documented Fisheries (FDF) scheme – looking at ways of tackling the problem of discarding fish. On behalf of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) we’ve been running the Fully Documented Fishery scheme with industry since 2011. The scheme incentivises fishermen to stop wasteful discarding of dead fish back into the sea and avoid catches of unmarketable fish. 

How Fully Documented Fishery schemes work

Fishing vessels taking part have to land all the fish of species of interest that they catch so they all count against their quota.  That is, they are “Fully Documenting” their catch.  If they use up their entire quota for these species they would have to stop fishing altogether, rather than continue and discard over-quota catch.   Remote Electronic Monitoring (REM) equipment is used to record the catch as it comes on board and the MMO can check that the no-discard rules are kept.  The REM equipment includes cameras to monitor fish processing and discarding, a GPS to track where the vessel is fishing and sensors to detect when the fishing net is deployed.’  Click here to read more