The National Federation of Fishermen’s Organisations (NFFO) and the Crown Estate recently hosted a meeting for representatives of fishing organisations from France, Netherlands, Germany, Belgium and Denmark, the FishUpdate news portal reports.
The European fishing organisations were acquainted with the mapping project that the NFFO is working on in collaboration with the Crown Estate, which is funded by the Crown Estate and the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC).
The project has gathered a large amount of plotter data over the last 12 months from a range of fishing vessel skippers. From this material the project has mapped the main areas of fishing activity potentially affected by the Round 3 offshore wind farm developments.
Special areas of concern at the meeting included the best lobster ground in the country and the Bristol Channel, in which the use of VMS data misled the planners to ignore the presence of significant fishing by the under-15 metre fleet. To ensure that this type of problem is less likely to show up in the future, skippers have voluntarily provided their valuable plotter data.
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Offshore WIND staff, May 16, 2012; Image: NFFO