In some contexts, industrial fishing is the term used to described highly mechanised commercial fishing operations, usually in comparison with relatively low technology artisanal fisheries. However, within the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea ( ICES) area, industrial fisheries are considered to be those fisheries whose ultimate products are principally fish meal and fish oil. This is in contrast to the so-called human consumption fisheries whose product are targeted directly at traditional markets.
The main targeted industrial fisheries in the north-east Atlantic are those for Norway pout, sandeel
( Ammodytes marinus) and sprat in the North Sea and adjacent waters, for capelin in the Barents Sea and around Iceland, for blue whiting to the west of Scotland and in the Norwegian Sea, and for mixed clupeoids (sprat and small herring ( Clupea harengus) in the Skagerrak and Kattegat.
Only small quantities of fish meal and fish oil are produced in the UK, most coming from small targeted fisheries for industrial species, from fish withdrawn from human consumption markets and from offal from the fish processing sector.
The industrial fisheries in the North Sea and neighbouring areas are prosecuted principally by Denmark and Norway, with industrial fishing vessels primarily using small-mesh trawl gears. In these areas the main industrial species (sandeel and Norway pout) comprise food items for other species that are targeted by the human consumption fisheries. This has lead to two major concerns:
- That industrial fisheries take excessive by-catches of immature fish of protected species some of which, if left in the sea, would survive both to become available to the human consumption fisheries and to contribute to the reproductive potential of those stocks
- That industrial fisheries deplete the food supplies of human consumption fish stocks and of other predators such as seabirds, seals, cetaceans and salmonids
Regulation of industrial fisheries outwith national 12 mile fishery limits is by a mixture of quotas, closed areas and by-catch regulations. Quotas are generally not restrictive, and this adds to the concerns expressed above. Within Scottish 12 mile fishery limits, two small-scale sandeel fisheries exist at Shetland and to the north and west of the Scottish mainland. These are managed within Scotland using triennial management measures that are agreed between local fishermen's representatives, wildlife conservation groups and national scientists and administrators.