06/07/2007 - Fuel efficiencient fishery a future must

WEEKEND FEATURE: Fuel efficiencient fishery a future must

WORLDWIDE
Friday, July 06, 2007, 23:50 (GMT + 9)


Reduced quotas, shrinking fishing vessels' sizes, restrictions on landed volumes per trip, are all structural changes assaulting the fishing industry worldwide. These changes will certainly provoke conflicts, as has been seen already, and there will be even more lay offs and monopolisation of fishing rights will increase, until some sound solutions can be found.

Many governments distribute quotas evenly to a large number of fishing vessels to keep as many as possible vessels profitable. There are large modern vessels moored at harbours most of the year as a result of small quotas. Other times the same vessels have to venture far out to the deep sea to get their maximum allowed catch per day of operations.

Small, old, inefficient vessels are catching fish when larger more fuel-efficient vessels are remaining idle. In many countries this has been a way to protect demographic structures, keeping people from not migrating to the urban areas.

Cars are being made to run on biofuel, and engine volume is restricted to limited emissions of pollutants. Some countries are enforcing duties on vessels emitting nitrogen oxides. It may put money in the coffers of the government, but is not necessarily reducing pollution.

If three small purses einers are steaming three days each way to catch 100 tonnes each, it is easy to understand that if one of these vessels, or one larger vessel, could do this job in one trip, the environment would have been saved from cubic tonnes of CO2 and other polluting emissions. But this is a fragile area, as it favours larger modern vessels against smaller vessels.

It is also more environmentally friendly to catch fish close to processing plants. But in many countries vessels fare orced to deliver their catch for political reasons at a plant that may be days away. Or an auctioning system may be in place making it profitable for the owners to sail a couple of days extra to land their catch. This of course not profitable for the world environment as it increases pollution.

In Norway whitefish vessels are obligated to deliver catch at specific processing plants, and not necesarily the most convenient plant. Of course the shipowner would steam far away with the catch if it increased the value of it, but the intention of the Norwegian system is to keep factories running in the far north. It is politics that is driving policy, and about giving rural people work where they are living.

There is a large fleet of purse seiners operating off the coast of Peru, supplying fishmeal plants with raw material. Many of these vessels are old and have very inefficient engines. To modernize them costs money that many vessels owners do not have. A lower number of more efficient vessels could both improve the quality of the fish being landed and keep the emission of CO2 down.

Today it is possible to build environmentally friendly vessels, as modern technology can reduce emissions. Combined with a more environmentally friendly logistics, millions of tonnes of CO2 could be stopped from entering the atmosphere.

Fishing and energy

There is no doubt purse seiners are more energy efficient than pelagic trawling, howeer, little is known with regards to the difference between gillnetting and longlining, or longlining vs. bottom trawl. Neophrops can be caught with trawl, but also by using pots. In the future the use of energy per unit of landed fish wil be more and more important. The fishing industry will not escape the cost of CO2 emissions.

FIS.com contacted sales manager Jan W. Lybekk in Mustad Longlining, possibly the world's largest producer of high-tech automatic longlining gear. But according to Lybekk there is no research by Mustad in energy efficiency and the difference in environmental impact of longlining vs. other fishing methods. For a long time there has been an established truth in the fishing industry that longlining is very effective in decreasing bycatch of unwanted species and undersized fish. Not much is known, however, about energy usage per tonne of fish compared with other fishing methods.

Favouring large corporations

Future engines will have to find the correct balance between efficiency and emissions. Hull design must focus on low energy use more than just speed. Global warming will in fact make the industry put less focus on time and more on the energy needed to catch and deliver the product. Politicians will be forced to think environmentally when they are distributing quotas and regulating fisheries in other ways.

Perhaps it is better to let one large vessels incorporate the quotas of 20 smaller vessels, or maybe it is more efficient to let 20 small modern vessels using longline or gillnets to catch the quota held by a large trawler. But how will the fishers left on land be compensated?

Development towards a more environmentally friendly fishery may be the dream for large corporations. They have the capital needed to invest in new technologies. The alternative is to force large numbers of smaller vessels to co-operate and organise their operations in more environmentally friendly manner. This is a minefield for politicians.

Small changes brings big benefits

A trawl door is not just a trawl door. There are lots of parametres involved in choosing the right trawl door, be it bottom trawl or pelagic trawl. The wrong door can increase the fuel usage by 5 to 10 per cent. The opening of the trawl has to be not only fishing effectively, but also render as fish as possible per tonne of fuel. As fuel prices have been increasing, this focus has been increasing in importance, and is indirectly resulting in more environmentally friendly trawling.

Thyborøn Skibssmedie is one of the companies developing trawl doors with increasing focus on fuel economy.

“Trials we have done in a research tank have shown that the right choice of trawl door can decrease the fuel consumption, without decreasing trawling speed or catch rates. For a large trawler is a saving of 3 to 5 per cent fuel increasing profitability substantially. And in addition is this a plus in an environmental perspective”, says sales manager Jan Bundgaard at Thyborøn Skibssmedie to FIS.com.

In reality the future focus on product development will be more and more towards lower fuel consumption and lower emissions.

The Faroese company is building a new trawler at Karstensens Skibsvært in Skagen, Denmark. The vessel will be 81 metres and be delivered in August 2009. The vessel will have a capacity to carry a catch of 2,700 tonnes of pelagic fish in RSW.

Despite the Faroese Government not having introduced any levies on the release of nitrogen oxide, as Norway is starting to collect from the fishing fleet, the vessel owners are investing big money in technology making the vessel release only 1 – 2 gram of NOx per KwH, against 18 grammes as the norm for fishing vessels.

The company expects a levy to be enforced on these emissions, and the investment will be profitable compared with paying a environmental levy. The extra cost involved in making the vessel an environment friendly vessel is EUR 500,000.

Building a new vessel today, will be an absurd project if that vessel is not made fuel efficient with low emissions of CO2 and NOx. And it is absurd to expect fisheries to be organised in the same way in the future as they are today. Environmental concerns, emissions and pollution, global warming and fuel efficient catch efforts are all words the industry will have to keep in mind, to be able to keep doing business.

By Terje Engoe
www.fis.com