Fisheries and Research
The Fisheries Management & Policy Team Function
The Southern IFCA Fisheries Management & Policy Team (FMP) are tasked to facilitate the delivery of the Authorities’ legislative duties, and in doing so, seek to improve the sustainability of marine fisheries and the marine environment, whilst supporting local communities who are reliant upon these resources.
Working under the Chief Officer, the FMP Team is led by a Deputy Chief Officer. A Senior Fisheries Officer (Conservation and Research) provides line management to three Conservation and Research Specialists as well as a Research Specialist.
The FMP Team have three core functions:
- Monitoring inshore fisheries;
- Developing inshore fisheries management interventions;
- Reviewing fisheries management interventions.
The FMP Team operate in a consistent and methodical way, for example, where an issue is identified (e.g., compromised sustainability of a specific fishery), a vision will be set for that fishery moving forward, we will seek to gather evidence and begin to evolve and implement management measures (where necessary), with the aim to achieve an end goal which will draw numerous workstreams together to enable the delivery of a fisheries management plan.
Underpinning all of the work undertaken by the FMP Team is a data management capability and Geographic Information System (GIS) expertise. GIS enables Southern IFCA to visualise, analyse and interpret data collected in order to better understand trends and relationships on a spatial scale. GIS is a valuable resource which is used by Southern IFCA, for example, to support stakeholder engagement and consultations through the use of visual aids; to represent activity data (fishing effort); to map sensitive habitats and designated MPA features to inform management; to map byelaws and to help with the planning and undertaking of surveys.
As the FMP Team has increased its capability in the research field through the undertaking of increasingly complex surveys and collection of more data, an increased GIS capability has been essential, providing more detailed analysis and the opportunity to effectively deliver the work the evidence team has been undertaking