Bass is one of the most valuable fish available to most commercial shore netters and therefore a key driver for them. The 2017 ban on shore netters landing bass reduced commercial shore netting activity and thereby reduced bass mortality however this has now been reversed. The revised legislation on the prohibition on landing and selling bass “does not apply to bycatches in shore based fixed gillnets (and those set from vessels with specified numbers of nets in different geographical areas). There is no definition of what constitutes bycatch, and no limits on the amount. Additional there is no closure during the spawning season – difficult to reconcile with the sustainability objectives of the Fisheries Act.

Save Our Seabass (SOS) have repeatedly told the Government that allowing fixed netters to land bycatch, but then not defining what is and isn’t bycatch, gives those fishermen a green light to illegally target bass and land it as “bycatch”. Cornwall IFCA has said “Whilst no definition exists, there is no option but to treat EU monthly or annual bass bycatch allowances as straightforward catch limits, regardless of any other fish landed.”

In December 2020, the Government said “applying an unavoidable bycatch condition to the gillnetting derogation rather than focusing on the desired outcome from the netting annual limits themselves has been a flawed management concept” and described the undefined “unavoidable bycatch” criterion as “ineffective”.

SOS believe the Government’s reversal of the bass ban landing for commercial shore netters will inevitably increase effort and therefore bass mortality, not just allow current levels of true bycatch to be landed. They have been calling for a percentage of catch restriction to stop commercial shore netters and fixed netters targeting bass – the same concept that is used successfully to limit bass bycatch landings in the bottom trawling and seining fisheries.

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