Read on for an update from the GAP2 German case study, looking at brown shrimp in the Wadden Sea, 12 months on from the last review.
Avoiding bycatch is mandatory in the CFP. Because of this, we have been
performing comparisons between trawl gears that avoid bycatch and traditional
trawls.
Furthermore, the brown prawn fishers are currently involved in an MSC certification and therefore they need to reduce their levels of bycatch. However, this will hamper a useful tool to study climatic change by detecting occurrences of non-native species.
For instance, fishers have recently caught a 2-m-long European conger (Conger
conger) and some juvenile red mullet (Mullus surmuletus), rare sightings in the
Wadden Sea. We speculate that the strong winds of the south have brought these
visitors from southern European seas.
We have been invited to a workshop on sustainable fisheries and developments of
fishing techniques that will be attended by representatives of WWF, Greenpeace,
fishers and fishery inspectors.
We expect two papers out next spring about changes in species in the Wadden Sea
and about diseases of the brown shrimp.
