A new Scottish Government funded project entitled 'Exploration of fishing capacity and fishing activity and their utility for effort management control of fishing mortality funded' began in April 2003.
One method of managing fisheries is through effort control. Effort is a combination of the activity of the fishing vessels and their capacity to catch fish. The underlying assumption is that the effort exerted by the fleet has a clear relation with the fishing mortality imposed on the stock of the target species.
The main aims of this pilot project are:
- To investigate the factors influencing catching ability of fishing units in the Scottish North Sea whitefish and Nephrops fisheries
- To determine the relative contributions of different components of the fleet to overall fishing mortality