Welcome to the Marine Biologist podcast.
Join us to discover the latest ocean topics from leading marine
scientists and conservationists. The podcast accompanies The
Marine Biologist, the magazine for members of the Marine
Biological Association, and is presented by the editor, Guy
Baker. We hope you enjoy this episode.
In this episode, we're discussing inshore and small
scale fisheries, with a particular focus on England.
Joining us is Sarah Coulthard, one of the founders of the
Inshore and Small Scale Fisheries Consortium.
Welcome, Sarah. Hi Guy, I'm delighted to be
here. Thank you so much for inviting
me. I'm I'm Doctor Sarah Coulthard
from the Centre for Rural Economy, based at Newcastle
University and I'm the sort of Newcastle University component
of the Insure and Small Scale Fisheries Consortium.
The Insure and Small Scale Fisheries Consortium is a group
of concerned individuals who have come from eight different
organisations and you can see that on them.
I think you're going to put some website details about the
consortium work accompanying this.
So I'm not going to list them all here, but the individuals
involved in this really have come together in common concern
about the decline we're currently experiencing in our
insurance small scale fishing fleet.
So we're delighted to have with us today the Ballyfill and
George Lamplugh, who I believe have both just got off their
fishing boats. Is that right, George?
Yes, that's, that's correct. So I've started at 4:00 this
morning, managed to jump in and out the shower and come in and
see you. As you said, my name is George
Lamplow. I've, I've been a sheer
fisherman for the past 15 years or so and I've recently become
involved in the small scale fisheries consortium and it's,
it's really great to speak to you today.
One thing that's to me is really important is having better lines
of communication between the fishing industry and science.
It's it's something that I'm always happy to see.
And it really does. It does me well to, you know, to
talk to you guys And, you know, if there's only marine
biologists that want to, you know, learn a bit more about the
fishing industry, talk to a fisherman.
We're not ogres. Please, please feel free.
We're not ogres. Despite how I look, I'm not a
monster. I won't eat.
Yeah. Come talk to a fisherman and
I'll pass on to that. Yeah, obviously I couldn't see
everything George has said there.
It's a great to get this opportunity to engage with a,
with a wider audience. So my name is Bally Phelp.
I work as a fisherman based on the Isle of Skye in Scotland and
I coordinate a group called the Scottish Keel Fisherman's
Federation. I'd like George today I wasn't
fishing. The weather up here was abysmal
today. So although I have just come
from the boat, I was doing maintenance and that's one of
that's one of the lots of the small scale fishermen.
Unfortunately, we have to do all our own books, our own
maintenance and our own accounting and so on and so
forth, and our own interviews too, and there's always plenty
to keep us immused. But it's been really great to
have an opportunity to come here today and tell you about the
work of the Insurance Small Scale Fisheries Consortium.
OK. Welcome everyone.
It's great to have you here. Sarah, could you could you
introduce the work of the Insurance Small Scale Fisheries
Consortium for us? Yeah, thank you.
Good afternoon, Guy. George Bailey, great to see you
all. Great to be here.
We're really grateful to you, Guy, as editor of the Marine
Biologist for, for reaching out to us to produce a special issue
and for all of the contributors from the consortium who have
spent time writing their various articles, which we will see in
in the edition when it's finally published.
And yeah, hugely grateful for this opportunity to talk a
little bit about, I suppose the unseen stories around the
fringes that we don't always write about in the publications,
but I think are really nice and helpful to reflect upon about
where the consortium emerged from.
And you know, why we're doing what we're doing around the, the
work that we're doing to try and secure ensure fishing
livelihoods in particular, and, and why, why that's so important
for marine biologists. And, and yeah, pretty much
anyone I would argue to, to engage with and, and, and
reflect upon. So if I may, I'd just like to
start a little bit about the, the background of where this
work came from, because it this unusually for a scientist, this
wasn't a large bid that we pulled together to try and get
funding to do a piece of work. This has really organically
grown out of nothing. And we've been, we've been very
fortunate to get funding as we've moved, moved along in
particular from the Esme Fairburn Foundation who have
been incredible supporter of this work.
And also more recently the association of Ifkas and
fishmongers who have come in to fund some of our more more
recent and planned events. It's always important to
remember to acknowledge your funders to begin with in these
things. But if I may, I'd just like to
go back to the sort of seed and the, the origins and the seed
of, of this work. And it really for me, starting
as a sort of marine social scientist working on the
Northumbrian coast, I can actually pin it down, at least
in terms of my involvement down to one conversation with a
fisherman in Northumberland on a different project.
I was talking to him about, you know, how how's life going
generally in fisheries. And he just really opened up and
explained the challenges of how the fishing community are
perceived often by others who don't fish around the sometimes
very negative assumptions around how how destructive fishing can
be to the environment. A lot of concern about how
sustainable it is or isn't depending on the context.
And he was explaining that he'd been following quite a lot of
chat on social media about some of the impacts of trawling in
particular because this fisherman runs a a small scale
under 10 metre trawl vessel. And he said to me at this,
during this, this conversation, he said, you know, you know, The
thing is, Sarah, is that we, we as fishermen, we used to be seen
as providers of food, but now we're just seen as destroyers of
the sea. And so this really sat with me
for a long time and I just, I felt really sorry for him.
Actually. I just thought how how sad and
unfair in, you know, not always unfair, but in this case I felt
it was pretty unfair to, for, for, you know, hard working,
very proud fishermen to we feel so just so invalued for the work
he's doing and almost demonised for it in the context of, you
know, the, the anti trawling debate that seems to be sort of
sweeping the country in recent years.
So I start with this for some time and then about six months
later I noticed the Pride in our Seas photograph exhibition from
the Scottish Fisherman's Federation that was touring
Scotland. And I saw what they were doing
with that work in terms of raising awareness in the
Scottish Parliament at the time of the importance of the fishing
fleet as a whole. I know we have Bali on the call
as well. And you know, certainly also
the, the work that he's been involved in through the
Aristides Coalition and the Coastal Testimonies Photograph
exhibition, which has also been on to, I think both of these
exhibitions really pointed to me the power of umm, photograph
exhibitions. So at that time I, I got a bit
of funding from Newcastle University together to do an
English fisheries version of that.
And it was really that the production of that exhibition,
which umm, the Scottish Fish Fisherman's Federation very
kindly allowed us to use the same name.
It's pride in our seas too, the English coast.
We, we produced that over a few, a few months and it was the
going out with the photographer Ian Georgeson and listening to
fisherman's stories. And I noticed very quickly there
was a common concern about the future of the fishing industry.
You know, sense of there's not enough people coming into it.
New recruits were really dwindling, all sorts of
pressures around the increased administration and, and other
challenges that fishermen are facing this day, these days.
And I'll talk, obviously, let George and Bally speak more to
the what these challenges are. But at that time that really
motivated me as a scientist to try and get a handle on, well,
you know, where's the data on this?
You know, are we in the, you know, is the industry in
decline? What does it look like?
Do we have that, that knowledge? We have that evidence base and I
did some research and there are some articles that are in
already published that have have snapshots of periods of time and
explanations about what's happening in the fleet.
But these felt a little bit buried in the academic
literature as things often become.
So I felt there was perhaps a space there to to write a new
article working with the data that we have from the Sea Fish
fleet survey. So if to those people that don't
know that sea fish annually they produce a survey across the
fleet in the UK and this is hugely important as a data set,
but it it generally describes fishing activities in the fleet
activities in that particular year.
There hadn't yet been any sort of any long term analysis of
change over time. So what we did with the team at
Newcastle was we we pulled together the data over time from
2008 to 2022 to look at changes in the fleet composition and
numbers of active boats, number of numbers of employed fishermen
and things. And, and we found very clearly
that there was decline across the whole fishing sector, but
that this decline was particularly accentuated in the
under 10 metre fleet. So that's a small scale fishing
fleet which at that time constitutes and, and, and still
to this day it constitutes about 3/4 of our whole fleet.
So it's not a minority of boats we're talking about.
We're talking about the majority of the fleet.
We saw that the small scale boats were declining at a faster
rate, almost twice the rate as those over over 10 metres.
And also they were they also really seem to be declining as a
sector on, on, on numerous indicators.
So for example, nearly 50% reduction in days at sea.
So opportunities for fishing experienced by the under 10's
and also 50, around 50% of a of a loss of employment of full
time fishermen in that sector. Now at that time and, and, and,
and still today I'm working with two brilliant post grad
researchers, both PhD students at Newcastle University, Phoebe
Lewis and Ainsley Hat. And they just really took this
analysis to a new level of how it's communicated.
So, so Phoebe, in particular, she managed to design this heat
map, which was in one of your earlier, one of the earlier
papers in, in the marine biologist showing the hotspots
of decline that really helped us understand that this decline in
the fleet is not being experienced equally in different
regions. And there's huge disparity
actually. So it was such a, an innovative
thing to do. I mean, I think, I think often,
well, you know, really always I think research groups are, are
just so grateful for their early career researchers.
And, and in this case in particular, you know, Phoebe and
Ainsley have really been the the rocket fuel behind so much of
this work. So that heat map got quite a lot
of attention. We published it in fishing news
saying, you know, these are the hotspots of decline.
These are areas that we might want to think about how to
engage with more, more actively to find out what's going on.
And this was also the beginning of our a writing of a paper with
20 co-authors that was eventually published in fishing
fisheries at the beginning of 2024.
And those co-authors really spanned a whole range of
different interests. We had many different scientists
involved, but we also had members of from from the fishing
industry represented represented.
We had members of environmental NGOs on in the author, in the
authorship and it took a long time to write that paper because
we had many meetings where we were trying to find the common
ground, you know, about what what do we actually agree on?
And the common ground very quickly emerged that there was a
common concern about the decline in particular in the small scale
fishing sector. And that's really what binds
this work together. And that's something that
everyone can agree is something to to think about and and be
concerned about. Internationally, we know that
small scale fisheries is in trouble in many countries.
So it's not just something that's facing the English fleet.
So it's very important to work with people like like Bally
Phelps, who's who's part of the Low Impact Fishers of Europe,
which is also looking at securing small scale fisheries
in countries around Europe but also beyond Europe.
This is something that that we're increasingly recognising.
For example, the FAO have their own guidelines of voluntary
guidelines on securing small scale fisheries, which all play
into this. So this is really trying to find
space within the English context to contribute to those
international debates more so than we have done in the past
and to to reflect, you know, within, within the UK context
about, well, what do we do now that we know that our small
scale fisheries are, are showing signs of struggling?
You know, how how do we address that?
And, and so the yeah. And just to say as well, I mean,
obviously it's important to recognise existing efforts that
are happening in, in which fisheries are very, very
complex, diverse area to work in.
There's never a dull moment. There are lots of different
initiatives going on out there. I suppose as a scientist my
engagement with with Defra and the MMO was often from within
the context of fisheries management plans, which are the
government's vehicle to, to produce the objectives of the,
the, the Fisheries Act. So often I would attend meetings
around the fisheries management plans, the FMPS and I remember
in 2023 going to an event in London that was really well
attended. There was about 60-70 people in
the room and for each of the individual fisheries management
plans, we had big boards up asking for us to annotate them
about perceived evidence gaps. And so to where are the gaps in
how what we understand about this particular fishery.
And I noticed that the vast majority of people in the room
were not social scientists talking about livelihoods.
They were very much stock in environmental fisheries
biologists talking about the stocks.
And I think it just dawned on me that, you know, each fishery
stock is itself so incredibly complex that it just takes up so
much time and effort to to think about how to manage stocks in a
sustainable way and without harm to the environment.
There's sometimes the livelihoods component of
fisheries seems to fall by the wayside.
And this was really brought home to me at this event in London
because I remember somewhere in the room there was a fisherman
who almost whispered to himself in one of these breakout groups
where I heard him. And I, I can't for the life of
me remember who it was, but I wish I could remember because I
would go and thank him for saying it.
But he said, he said, you know, it's all very well making sure
that there are enough stocks in the sea for a sustainable
fishery, but if there's no one left to do the fishing, then we
also don't have any fishery. I just thought that's exactly
right. But who's picking up that
element of sustainable fisheries right about the, the, what's
happening to the people and their capacity to fish?
So this then lead on to sort of all fed into the, the paper that
we eventually published in fish and Fisheries, which really
detailed the decline. It, you know, it had all the,
the evidence in there that the, the numbers that that's needed
almost a, a, we saw a decline over a 14 year period in the
fleet as a whole of almost a 1/5.
And it showed this, this aspect of regional disparity and the
accentuated decline amongst the under 10 metre fleet, the, the
smaller scale boats. And so then we thought, well, is
that it? And what can we do next with
this? Do we just leave it as a paper
in fish and fishery? There's this great journal.
We're all pretty happy with it when it, when it finally got
published, or do we do more? And at that point, we had the
idea to go to the Esme Fairburn Foundation to see if they would
fund some workshops so that we could take the data to the
actual fisherman and say, look, can you help us explain what's
going on here? So what, why is the fishing
fleet in such decline and what could be done to mitigate the
decline and make your livelihoods more secure?
So at that point this was really the beginning of the consortium
as it is now and we had a smaller number of of co-authors
who came together representing that they're different
organisations. We've got about 7 organisations
now and we came together to start to to plan these two
workshops, one of which was in Poole, one of which was in
Whitby in autumn in 2024. To just really provide the
platform to bring together scientists, to bring together
the regulators and the fishermen to talk about what is happening
to the decline in our fishing fleet.
And what what is what we didn't know and what we're still trying
to understand better is what is it that makes a smaller boat
particularly sensitive to some of these challenges?
You know, so why are we seeing this accentuated decline in the
under 10 sector? That's something we still just
don't know, you know, because vulnerability is seen across the
whole fleet. But the way that it affects
different types of fishery, different sizes of boat is is
very can, can, can really vary. So we just don't have enough
information about that. So these two workshops are
really an opportunity to have those discussions.
And it was a bit of an experiment.
You know, it's quite a challenge to get the right people in the
room there. To be honest, we didn't know if
it was going to work. We thought that, you know,
sometimes, you know, fishermen will say that we'll come to
something, but then it's a good fishing day and they, you know,
understandably they can't come. And so it was all a bit of an
experiment. But we ran these two workshops,
which I think George and Bally are going to reflect on for it.
And they were just hugely successful, you know, that we,
we managed to distil from those some priorities to help secure
the inshore fleet. And through those workshops and
the, the future work that we're now planning, this consortium of
organisations has now come together a bit more, a bit more
solidity to, you know, we meet regularly on a weekly basis.
We're thinking about, you know, how do we, how do we promote and
embed these priorities, you know, these these voices that
we're we're hearing from the internal fleet about what they
think is important to address. Yeah.
So that is, is where we are now. I would also say that over the
summer we were actually able to go out, sorry, this summer, last
year that the summer that's just gone.
We were able to get a bit more funding from the Association of
IFKAS and again from the Esme Fairblan Foundation to take
these outputs from these two workshops about the priorities
of the inshore fleet, about what would make their livelihoods
more secure. We took them around the
coastline and we, we had, we had a opportunity to go to several
fisheries events in Cromo and Whitby N Shields and Hastings.
And we have more planned for this summer.
So we, we take the, the outputs from those workshops and we
discussed them with fishermen in those areas.
So a sense of not just keeping us all within workshops, but
then doing some outreach work so that we can talk to communities
who weren't at, you know, weren't able to come to those
workshops because obviously you, you're limited in terms of
numbers. But we did, we, yeah, we, we,
we, we did that kind of Rd it's like a summer roadshow.
And, and we also talked a lot with the public, the general
public in the, in those areas to understand how they also feel
about it. So I think I will stop there.
That was a really you said this is going to be a short
introduction. That's a really long winded
introduction, but it's but that's where it came from.
So it's an interesting one because it's not, it's just
really grown organically. It's not that someone has sat in
an office somewhere and written out a big research bid, which is
how I would normally do things as a scientist.
It's just we're really learning and doing as we're learning and
you know, as we move along. And so, yeah, that so far there
seems to be momentum and buy in from lots of different
organisations. Now the fishermen who support
this and who come to these events are just incredibly
important. And we couldn't, we couldn't do
any of this without them. So to have the buy in from the
from the fishing community is really valuable.
And we are now in the position where in February, which was
what in February, in about 3 weeks time in February, we're
going to have our a national insure and small scale fisheries
symposium held in Newcastle. And we've got nearly 120 people
signed up to that, fifty of which are in shore fishermen.
And so I'd also just say about why we, why we are calling this
in shore and small scale rather than just small scale fisheries.
So that we had this discussion in, in the workshops in Poole
and Whitby and it was really trying to understand how in
shore fishermen themselves wanted to be known.
And they very clearly said we prefer the term inshore because
it's very difficult to define what small scale is, you know,
and this has been a, a debate that rumbles on and I think has
really inhibited action to, to recognise small scale fisheries
over the years when it, you know, I don't think we can allow
that to, to continue in, in some ways.
You know, the inshore fishermen said very clearly they preferred
the term inshore fishermen to allow for there to be less of a
clear cut boundary around what is small scale and what isn't,
but to recognise their dependency on inshore waters.
So within 6 nautical miles. OK, so that was one reason.
But also they, they said that nobody really knows what small
scale means. You know, it sounds like it's
somehow small and, and important, whereas inshore
sounds more, you know, coastal and that maybe is more
recognising. But the the coastal connections
and contributions that small scale fisheries deliver that
they're connected to place along our coastline.
And so we're very keen to use that term inshore fisheries.
And at the same time, we include the small scale because we're
also recognising that generally speaking, these are smaller
inshore vessels. And we also want to keep this
work connected with this global debates and progress that are
being made to secure small scale fisheries because they don't use
the term inshore fisheries in other parts of the world.
You know, so it's quite specific to to England and where you have
this divide between inshore and offshore in terms of 6 nautical
miles. So that's where we have two, the
two, the two phrases just to clarify that there is a
rationale behind that. Yeah, it might not be that in
the future, I don't know. We have to.
We have to see, OK. Great.
Thank you, Sarah. That's a that's a great
introduction and it's really useful to hear why something is
called what it is rather than just being taking it as a as
given. It's good to hear the background
of why I remember Robert Clark of the Association of IF because
I was talking to him and he told me that this country is fairly
unique, England fairly unique and having still having an
ensure fishing sector. That's that, you know, despite
all the difficulties facing it, we still have it and I think
that's really worth sort of remembering.
Bally and George, you have any sort of reflections on that
introduction about the formation of the consortium or how the
workshops work for you? So the, the, our sort of
approach to this is maybe slightly different or our
experience, this is slightly different from Sierra's.
So I work with the Scottish Kale Fisherman's Federation and we,
we've been running for about 12 years in Scotland and we
specifically focus on this small scale ensure and static gear
fleets in Scotland. And it's a, it's a criteria of
membership that generally speaking, we, we restrict our
membership to under 12 metre static gear boats and we try and
promote low impact fisheries as part of our, our fundamental
makeup. And, and we're like Sarah
mentioned earlier, we're members of low impact fishers of Europe,
which have a similar sort of constitutional makeup.
And then, and again, low impact fishers of Europe generally
restrict their membership to under 12 metre boats using
static gear only, although there are exceptions.
Interestingly, low impact fishers of Europe are just
joined by a Norwegian association with 500 boats,
fifteen of whom are well over 12 metres up to 15 metres and a few
of which are using mobile gears. But they've still signed up to
the idea that we promote specifically the the values and
the management that optimal for the small scale and and low
impact fleets. And it's interesting to see I
mentioned there, there are controversies around the use of
words like small scale Fisher and low impact fishers and, and
ensure fishers. And you know, this is a
perennial debate. I don't think we'll, we'll,
we'll ever finish with it. But you know, there is a bit of
a background to those terms as well, which is probably worth
mentioning. So the sustainable development
goals, which the UK have signed up to specifically state that we
must protect access to fishing opportunity for small scale
Fisher. But then unfortunately, it
doesn't define small scale Fisher, which which leaves that,
you know, which leaves that a little bit of a mess when it
comes to trying to push that forward.
And the Fisheries Act in the UK specifically compels us to try
and incentivize lower impact fishing, But again, that's not
defined. It's it's vaguely defined as
fishing which produces better social, economic and
environmental outcomes than a competing alternative.
But then that that's you still can't tell if something is a low
impact fishing until you start contrasting it and comparing it
with something else. Nevertheless, there's there is a
lot of consensus that that smaller scale fisheries need
more protection. They're more vulnerable the
inshore fisheries because of the restricted geographical range
and size in need that protection as well.
And also that the generally smaller scale and lower impact
fisheries produce and this is a generalisation, so it's not in
every single case produce better social, economic and
environmental outcomes when compared to say larger
industrial fisheries. Often they, they offer more
employment per kilo cot, higher value per kilo cot and generally
speaking, and this again is not a rule, but often lower
environmental impact per kilo cot as well.
And because of those things, these are the, the very reasons
that the sustainable development goals compel us to try and
protect access to fishing opportunity for that fleet
segment, because that fleet segment does produce those
disproportionate benefits to society and to the fishing
communities that they work from. So it's, it's really important
to protect these fleet segments. And I'll maybe come back a
little bit on what, what Sarah was saying about, about the
unique challenges that are faced by the small scale fleet.
Although we're still working through the unique challenges
faced in, in, in the English ports and, and, and the, the
vary between fishery and, and geographical location.
A lot of the challenges faced by the small scale fleet are the
same in in Scotland, England and, and arguably across the
world. And that is that when you're a
small scale owner operator, you're, you're the skipper of
your boat, you're the, the boss of your crew, you're the
accountant, you're the mechanic, you're the engineer, you're the
grant applicant, You're the, the problem is that it's, it's not
easy to do all of the things that are necessary to run a
small scale fishing boat. And especially when you consider
a lot of people got into into fishing in the 1st place because
the the particular maybe didn't do fantastically well at school
or they were frustrated by the humdrum of normal day-to-day
life. And so you tend to find the
skill sets for grant applications, mechanics,
engineering or whatever aren't the kind of things that
fishermen get taught. They're the kind of things they
have to learn on the hoof. And that means that a lot of
fishermen, they're just juggling a lot of jobs and the main thing
they want to do is get out in a good day of weather and get a
decent catch and pay the crew a decent wage.
But there's all of these competing demands on their time.
And it means that they're they're rarely optimising their
contribution to fisheries management or their ability to,
to attract the subsidies that may be available.
And you tend to find this across the board that that there's
under representation of small scale fishers and fisheries
meetings, that there's an A lower uptake of grants and
subsidies into in the small scale fishing fleets and so on.
And it's not because the small scale fishers aren't interested
in fisheries management or don't want grants and subsidies.
It's because the minute that you engage in these things, you're
forfeiting your ability to go to sea and earn a livelihood.
So I think, I think although the challenges are unique in each
fishery, in each port, generally speaking, it's not easy to be a
small scale Fisher and thrive in the kind of environment that
that we've designed for fisheries.
A lot of the environment has been designed for fisheries
suits, larger scale operators who have individual people
commissioned to do each of these tasks.
So I think, you know, we, we start at a disadvantage and
there's many other disadvantages I think which, which are faced
by, by small scale fishers. Generally speaking, they're more
vulnerable to weather than large boats.
And so they lose more days at sea to weather.
They're more if you're only a A2 crew, you know, a skipper and a
crew and a boat, then you're more vulnerable to, to loss of,
of access to crew than a boat that maybe it's 5 or 6.
If, if somebody doesn't turn up in the morning, the boat can
still go to sea. But if you're working on a 2 man
boat and your crew doesn't show up or you're having difficulty
recruiting a crew, then that means you're tying up your boat
potentially for quite a while. So I think I think there are,
you know, there are a lot of factors in that that
disproportionately impact small scale fishes.
I mean, another one is just the general health of the marine
ecosystem and, and the status of the, of the stocks that you're
targeting. Because often these small scale
boats, they're restricted to fishing on day trips within 12
or so miles of land. And although again, there are,
there are many exceptions, that generally means that you, you're
highly dependent on the, on the health of the, the marine
ecosystem in your local environment.
And if a large nomadic fleet comes in or poor fisheries and
management decisions have left that area denuded of your target
species, then you're quite screwed compared to a big boat
that can just go elsewhere. And so all of those things I
think conspire to mean that that it's harder to be a small scale
Fisher than a large scale Fisher.
I would argue for, for all of those reasons.
And, and, and that accounts to a huge extent for the, the
declines and, and the challenges small scale fishers are facing.
We've been working on this for quite a long time in Scotland.
And as I say, it's, it's, it's common right across Europe.
But interestingly, the Scotchgy fisherman's Federation hadn't
worked much in England up until a few years ago.
England had a dedicated small scale voice in in nut voucher,
which was the new under 10 metre fisherman's association.
And that folded a few years ago. And that's left England in a
position where there isn't a dedicated voice for its small
scale and ensure fleet. And I think one of the exciting
things about the consortium, one of the things that that we
really enjoy seeing happening in the consortium is the consortium
starting to, to help promote that voice, identify the issues
and and try and get the challenges addressed.
And so we've gone from working in Scotland and in Europe, but
sort of bypassing England to now being able to engage with
England and seeing England, England small scale fleet regain
its voice again. And, and that's a really good
thing for us because as I say, I think the future is, is
promoting and maximising the the benefits that we already see
from small scale fishers, having as much or as many small scale
fishers as possible and only allowing larger scale industrial
fishers to encroach where there isn't the opportunity for small
scale fishers, because otherwise, you know, we forfeit
jobs or revenues or the marine environment unnecessarily.
So I think whenever possible, we should always try and promote
the low impact option on the small scale Fisher option.
I think from the point of view of society and the fishing
industry, that's where we get the best bang for our buck.
I think there's a, there's quite a few, few other individual
issues that we can go in and in more detail.
But I think at this point it's probably worth letting George
come in and, and tell us a little bit about his experience
and what that's meant for wet beer, what he thinks that means
for, for a small scale fleet in England.
He's more qualified than me to talk on this one, that's for
sure. Yeah, thank you very much, Bali.
I'm probably going to keep things a bit shorter.
I've been up since 4:00 this morning and I'm not sure I can
speak so well as Sarah and Bali just have now.
To me I think that it has to be said that the fishing industry
as a whole, both the small scale and the larger scale fishes are
are to an extent victims of some some pretty bad PR at times.
I mean we've we're not these monsters trying to rape and
pillage to see if it's last anything.
We're not these cash obsessed lunatics waiting to destroy the
world. We're, we're making a living.
We're providing a very low carbon food.
We're providing something clean, something healthy.
And that often gets forgotten, You know, to this, to this myth
of the, the demonic Fisher flag in the oceans.
Now, certainly on the high seas, it might be a different
conversation in, in British waters we are very heavily
regulated and you know, we, we do get some bad press.
But you know, obviously we're talking about the small scale
and a lot of the things do disproportionately affect us.
Unfortunately, one of them things is when, when the large
scale fisheries move on. So when we're talking about
things like access to a market, it's it's unfortunate.
But take for instance, last week I was down in Brixham, fantastic
fishing port. They're certainly set up for a
larger scale of Fisher, but this benefits to small scale
fishermen. So say for instance, right now
for for diesel, we're paying around about 75 pence a litre.
The guys down in bricks on the even on the smaller vessels are
paying 50 pence a litre. You know, due to the volume of
fuel that's being used in that port.
It also means that they can have a wider composition of catch
because if they have, you know, the beamers moving 100 boxes of
place or, or what have you, if they come in with half a box, it
still has value and the merchants will still buy off
them. Whereas where we are here in
Whitby, we don't have that larger scale fleet and the
buyers aren't set up to, to buy that same half a box of place
offers. So it's, it's, it's, it is
important to look at the decline of the, the small scale fishery.
It's, it's a horrible thing to see.
And I think we're, we're suffering disproportionately,
but we, we certainly should look at the value of the, the larger
scale fishery as as part of the conversation as as a whole.
So, you know, that's just something I felt, you know,
worth putting in there to begin with.
Now, when I became involved with the, the consortium here, when,
when they came up to Whitby and it's, I'd like to make it was
absolutely fascinating and fantastic.
So I've, you know, academics and pardon me, it was absolutely
fantastic to have academics and have scientists in the room who
were engaged and positive about fishing rather than talking
about the great demons that we are.
So, you know, that that for me made it something that I would,
you know, I felt that I wanted to get involved with.
And, you know, more time I've spent with with Sarah, with
ballet, with Phoebe and Ainsley, with all these guys, It's it's
made me think nothing but, you know, positive about the idea.
So, yeah, All in all, I think it is it is really important to
develop that voice. And as as ballet said, and I'll
certainly think it's a message that needs to be hammered home.
Oscars on the in the smaller side, in the smaller sector, we
do not have the the representation of the larger
fleet. It's very hard for us to go and
fight our corner because for us to go and fight our corner, we
have to lose a day's work and travel, fund accommodation.
Sometimes you have to to, to go to an event, to go to a meeting,
to talk to people. It goes, it goes into the
hundreds of pounds that we lose just to go there and, you know,
try and represent ourselves to try and be heard, to try and,
you know, create a voice for our, our sector.
And unfortunately that's, that's not feasible.
I mean, fishing is a fantastic job.
It's a wonderful job, It's a great job, but I can assure you
it's not one of the most well paid jobs in the world.
And the idea of taking time off to to go and do what?
What has to be done, what's, what's essential to, to go and
represent and fight for your, you know, fight for your sector,
fight for your, your corner. It's, it's, it's, it's
impossible. Sometimes it really is.
And it's, you're banging your head against the wall.
So in again, in this sort of thing, the having a consortium
and and working together and creating more of a singular
voice, it can only be a good thing.
I'm not quite sure what else to say.
So I'm going to turn my microphone off and you know,
we'll, we'll get back to chit chattering.
Can I come back in just a little bit on, on what George was
saying about, about the dishes and fishing?
It's quite interesting because within the consortium, the
consortium is focused very much on, on small scale and ensure,
you know, even though those terms aren't clearly defined and
can even be divisive on their own within the clear federation
and, and low impact of Europe, we add another label over and
above those two, which is the low impact label.
And, and it's, it's an interesting one because
obviously we think that that that's, you know, the future of
fisheries is, is, is, is making it selective and low impact and,
and high value as possible. That's the way to sort of
optimise those social, economic, environmental outcomes.
But it does often lead to the challenge where, where it
introduces another divisive term again into the whole debate.
And so are you small scale enough?
Are you insured enough? Are you low impact enough?
These are often the, the kind of conversations we have and, and,
and it can be quite divisive and, and you know, and this is
even within our own fishing communities and fraternities.
And then when you have this larger public discourse, the,
the nuance of those terms is lost in the public.
And the public are focusing on the few things they know about
fishing. And, and often the only thing
the public knows about fishing is this idea of overfishing at
once what it once was better, or it's not as good as it used to
be because the fishermen have overfished it or the fishermen
have done XYZ. And it's very frustrating for me
as a fisherman because often fishers don't have any real
input into how their fisheries are managed, that that's done at
the science level and at the civil service level.
And, and if, if and when there is overfishing, it's very rarely
the individual fault of the Fisher.
I mean, that's maybe not true if you've done some sort of illegal
or unregulated fishing in masses as part of a huge industry, but
that kind of thing has hopefully been eliminated from the most of
the UK for the last 50 or so years.
So the kind of overfishing that the, the public are often
associating with fishers and fishermen in the fishing
industry is, is largely the responsibility of the people who
manage fisheries and not the fishermen themselves.
It, it can be very frustrating as a fisherman when you campaign
for good regulations, better minimum landing sizes and highly
selective gear. And, and, and then the public
demonise you, like George says, because the, the associate
fishing with poor environmental outcomes.
And, and very, you know, I, I just like to emphasise that very
rarely is that the responsibility of the individual
fishers, whether it's small scale or large scale fishing,
the individual fishers are doing their best to make a good living
within the rules that we're given.
And, and more most frustratingly for us is often the rules we are
given really don't lead to good outcomes.
And I wish the public were a little bit more well educated on
the subject of fisheries management, because it's
fisheries management that's responsible for how many fish
the fishermen are or are not meant to leave, leave in the
sea. And, and what we're, we're
finding in, in this day and age is, is a lot of the, the, the
basis upon which fisheries management has formed has, has
not been credible. So for example, we, we often
allocate how much fish you can catch using a system called
maximum sustainable yield. But we're now told that, that we
need an ecosystem based approach.
And, and if you look at how much of our historical fishing was
done out with the ecosystem based approach, you realise that
again, it wasn't, wasn't the fisherman not following the
rules that was the problem. It was that the rules weren't
fit for purpose. So I, you know, I would just
like to make that clear that a lot, a lot of the things that
the public are inclined to blame fishermen for not actually the
responsibility of fishermen. Could I just come in just there
about just returning to the experience of the workshops in
Poole and Whitby, because in the special issue we have an article
led by Emily Bullard, the Association of Ithacas, who's
been very central to coordinating these workshops as
as we all have as as a consortium.
It it was interesting at the time when we were setting them
up, there was some discussion about whether these platforms
should just be for the inshore fleet to come together on their
own without input from regulators.
You know, the if goes the MMO just to have that space to
discuss things. And I think, well, what I've
certainly have really learned since running those workshops
and through that experience is the value of creating really
quality time for regulators and policy makers to sit with, with
the fishing community and share knowledge, exchange their
different versions of the realities in which each of those
different stakeholders operates. And that, and I think we often
talk about trust in, in the in fishing and how do we regain
trust as scientists, as, as policy makers.
And I do feel that those workshops were a really
important platform to start to try and rebuild trust where it
had been broken. And I think you know that that
ability to have those three days, because, sorry, I should
have said each workshop was three days.
So we had new evenings together as well.
And, and, and that type of format just enables you to
interact with each other in a way that just isn't possible
through online consultation or Zoom meetings.
And it's really making sure that that quality time was there.
And I think one thing, one moment in one of the, I think it
was the whip, It was, it was the Whitby workshop.
At the end of that workshop, there was a really, really a
moment that stuck in my mind when one of the IFCA chief
officers, who I know, and I won't say which one, I won't say
which Ifka they, they were from, but he came up to me afterwards
and said that after three days of discussion and one of the
fishermen on his on his table, he was actually from a different
regions. He wasn't part of his Ifka.
He'd come up to him afterwards and said, I'd like to shake he
by the hand because he's completely changed my perception
of Ifkas. And I just thought, God, you
know, that's, that's what we're aiming at here, you know, as
well as trying to make, you know, tangible and, and viable
action points to improve things. I think there's also, you know,
if we can rebuild relationships that are so frayed at the
moment, you know, through the, through the, you know, the
course that we've taken since Brexit and a lot of mistress is
out there. I think just having the space
that these workshops provide to reconnect has been really
valuable. I don't know if either of you
wanted to talk a bit about the workshop experience.
Well, actually I was, I was hoping to just say a little bit
on the, the trust side of things with, you know these
organisations. Now personally it is, it's my
belief that the onus is on the likes of death for MMO if
etcetera to rebuild that trust. I feel like as you know, as an
industry, time and again, we've, we've, we've done our best to
be, you know, to play fair with them.
We've done our best to, you know, to try and get treated
fair. And time and again we have
we've, we've ended up being disappointed.
And this is this again, is a big concern at the minute with
things like the FMPS coming out where the, the hope is that
things are, you know, going to be done in a, in a better way.
People are going to, you know, treat, pardon me, treat the
fishing industry a little bit better this time.
And you know, time will tell. But honestly, for any, for
anybody in marine management watching, you've got to rebuild
that trust because because at the minute it's, it's really,
it's really lacking. It's really not there and it
would just be nice to to work in an environment where we we can
work together a bit better. And that's, yeah, that's just
what I wanted to say about that. I'll maybe add a few thoughts on
the workshops. I, I think they were quite
special, to be honest with you. And, and, you know, Sarah has
already listed the idea of bringing together all these
different stakeholder groups from, you know, managers and
NGOs and, and academics and fishers themselves, you know,
using different gears and different sized boats, different
areas and all putting us all in the same room.
And I think that's quite unique and quite rare in my experience,
and especially in the scale that we've done it on.
Like I said, I mentioned 3D residential workshops is, is a
very, you know, intense few days to, to be, you know, we had some
very formal exercises on, on processes where we tried to
identify and tease out the, the challenges and then the
potential solutions and so on and so forth.
But also the just the opportunity to spend so much
time together and realise that we're all human and we're all
just struggling to do our jobs and then and and give us an
opportunity to see things from each other's perspective.
Like George says, there's a lot of trust broke down over the
years between all those various sort of sub sectors.
And maybe maybe it's just that we handpicked some of the better
people in the room or or the right people volunteered.
But I really did get the impression of if this is what
you can do in this kind of a workshop, then there's a lot
more potential in the future to get things right.
It really did feel like we were engaging in a in a constructive
process. I've seen that once before.
There was a big meeting in London just before Brexit
discussing what a future, post Brexit future might look like
for the Insure fishing industry. And then these two big
workshops, the one in Poole and the one in Whitby.
And in the, the 12 or 4 years I've worked formally in
fisheries management as a fisheries representative, those
are the three, only three occasions where I've seen a
gathering like this take place where you have multiple days,
the, the diverse range of stakeholders and, and, and a
common agenda where you're working together constructively.
And, you know, I think that it, it's invaluable.
I wouldn't like to calculate how you would achieve the kind of
outputs that we were generating in, in, in any other way.
I don't think it's possible. And, and like Sarah says,
there's this one more big workshop coming up in Newcastle
in February. And, and I think these are some
of the best opportunities to ensure fleet of heart in many,
many years to kind of bridge this gulf of, of like George
mentioned, this sort of lack of trust or lack of confidence in
the decision making and lack of sort of connection between US
and the various other disciplines that are working in
fisheries, whether it's an academia or in, in management or
the Eng, It was even. And, and to get us all in the
same room and have a sort of fighting from a common corner, I
think is, is a very precious thing.
And, and it may actually be one of the last chance saloons we
have for the small scale fishing industry.
Because if we can't get our heads in our, you know, get all
our bodies in the room, bang our heads together and come up with
the solutions, then the question is, who is, you know, who's
going to do this? Who else is going to do this?
And then, and the odds are that, you know, even if somebody else
tried, they're not going to do as good a job as, as the, the
people who are as passionate as the ones that we that we managed
to find and, and bring together. So I, I think it's been a
brilliant opportunity. I really do think that it's,
it's one of the best hopes I've seen for a long time for the
insurer fishing industry, generally speaking.
Yeah, that's all I really want to say about that.
That's and so do you, do you see how this consortium could kind
of keep going? Could it be built into policy
making in a more sort of sustainable way?
I think it can, yes. So I think that the the
important thing is especially these these early doors is to
well, it's just to grow and develop.
It's, you know, hopefully early doors will get some some
achievements in and people from the outside or decide that
they'd rather, you know, be be within that within that group.
But it's certainly a case you're better off, you know, being in
the vote bailing out then out the vote bailing in.
So yeah, I think there's a there's a real opportunity and
hopefully, because I put it I think in in the fleet, it's it's
very easy for for people to come become jaded to think I'll
nothing's nothing's ever going to change.
But you know, people still turn out and support the England
football team. So, you know, hopefully people
have people will get a bit of enthusiasm, get a bit of
optimism and if we can get that optimism in the room.
And that's that's something I did feel very strongly in
Whitby. And one of one of the other
groups I think there's ever mentioned here is I've attended
several events with fishing into the future.
And you do get that, you know, that same sort of multiple day
experience, that same, that same buzz in the room, that same
feeling that things can be different, that things can be
better. I, I think that, yeah, if we can
get people to engage, get them, get them early wins and get, you
know, pick that low hanging fruit, as Sarah says, then yeah,
there's, there's, there's definite opportunities.
I'm going to I'm going to switch me microphone off and let one of
the grown-ups talk for a minute. Would I count as that grown up
George? I'm not sure, but but I would
say two things I think that you've made me think about.
Well, three things actually. Firstly, there is as you know,
as Bally and George have both alluded to, there is huge
urgency in this work because we're seeing the decline in the
intro fleet in particular is seems to be in particularly
problematic. We've seen, we've seen hot spots
around the coastline with some towns and villages down to their
last few boats where they have had, you know, much larger
flourishing fleets in, in previous years.
And in, you know, where I live in Northumberland, we're, you
know, we're seeing, you know, very likely loss of fishing
boats in many of our rural areas and smaller harbours.
And that that picture is being repeated around the coastline.
You know, places like Hastings, for example, was once the once
boasted the largest beach landed fleet in the whole of Europe.
It's now down to a very small number of boats and great
uncertainty about the continuation of fishing in a, in
a, you know, a town that Hastings has had fishing and
active fishery for well over 1000 years.
And and many of the, the fishing families that are, that are in
Hastings of can can trace their, their fishing heritage back for
almost the same amount of time. It's, it's so yeah, there's
something incredibly precious about our fishing communities
and the, the, all the, the benefits that they deliver to
our coastal communities, not least food security, which
George has also mentioned. But the, the question about and
what, what could this possibly deliver?
I think our approach really is to really work closely with
Defra and, and the MMO and, and the IFKAS and, and that's,
that's always been our approach to ensure that they have the
right tools, the right evidence that we're supporting them to
hear the voice and to engage fully with small, with the small
scale fishing sector, because, you know, we all recognise how
difficult that is to do. Bally mentioned earlier about
some of the challenges of being a small scale Fisher when you're
a single handed boat of, of, of attending meetings and having
time often is, is, is a real challenge to, to engage in some
of this work. So we're really trying to work
with government to, to, to support what they're doing and,
and to make sure that they have the full breadth of evidence and
the inputs that the inshore fleet can, can bring and to
enable them to make good decisions that help and support
a sustainable fishing, sustainable fishing livelihoods
for the inshore fleet. And our approach has always been
to try and find those points of consensus because often there's
a lot of disagreement about what to do.
And you often see that splashed all over the, you know, the
headlines of fishing news, for example, where you have, you
know, you often have environmental NGOs saying one
thing and being vehemently disagreed with by members or
representatives of, of the fishing industry.
And what we're really trying to do is bring everyone together,
all stakeholders together to say, look what, what can be
agreed upon. Because you know, when you do,
when you can speak with one voice and you do find that
consensus, I think it's a lot easier to get those messages up
into government and for action to, to follow.
So that, that, that is part of the rationale behind the, the,
the design of these workshops, making sure that there's quality
time for in depth discussion and that we can accommodate and
debate, you know, from across all these different viewpoints
and realities that, that, that different stakeholders bring to
the table. But I'm also reminded when
George was talking, I was reminded in the of the famous
words of Margaret Meek, who he may or may not know in, in
social science, in the social sciences, who she was a very
famous anthropologist. And she said, never doubt that a
small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change
the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that
ever has. So I kind of trying to remind
myself about that quite regularly here because it, you
know, sometimes fishermen come to these events and they are,
you know, understandably completely despondent and
utterly fed up. And I, you know, and it's really
important that we don't overstate what we're doing or
make promises that can't be kept.
I think we've had enough of those over recent years.
So, you know, carefully, carefully, we're trying to
progress viable solutions, get the consensus from the different
stakeholders we need, telling us what's viable, what is not
viable and generating new understanding about that and
building the evidence base that we need to support that.
So that when we go to Defra and ministers with with hopefully
widely agreed and supported solutions to improve fishing
livelihoods for the inshore fleet, we've got a really solid
evidence base to back it up. I think we've really covered it
all and more. There was one about, you know,
how does this work reach and influence policy makers that I
thought about when we were talking.
OK, so the the purpose of the National Symposium of Insure and
Small Scale Fisheries this February in Newcastle is to
really bring together a a broader, A broader range of
stakeholders from across multiple organisations who are
coming, who are in various positions of decision making.
Bring those people together with fishermen who fish predominantly
in shore and on small boats to talk about viable actions that
can improve livelihoods moving forward.
And the vision is to produce from those, from that event,
which is running over 2 days in early February, a very clear
action plan of things that the room agrees are feasible to take
forward. And we hopefully will have the
right people in the room to then pick up those things and promote
them and take them forward within their own, within their
own organisation. So some of those are quite may
be quite technical. Some of those may be specific to
a particular region. But when we're talking about
policy impact, that is also something that we are addressing
at. The at the February events, but
what we're moving towards and it you know, I don't want to pre
empt what will come out of that because this is a part of the
code design process. But what we are, we have talked
about a lot already within the consortium and at the workshops
in 2024. What we're moving forward with
is a, is a vision for our fisheries, which is about small
scale fisheries as being part of a diverse fleet that is
geographically widespread and inclusive of lots of small
boats. And I, I think that is something
that most people will be able to get behind and support.
And the the more we can talk about that and where small scale
fisheries fits within UK wide fisheries policy, I think the
better. OK, so we're really trying to
build the momentum, have debates to at least get that discussion
really flowing and with the hope that the policy makers may take
that on board and, and think about these two aspects, you
know, about the importance and the value of our insurance small
scale fishing sector. And also about this issue about
the regional disparity around the decline.
You know that we don't hear much about that, you know, do we do
we care as a country if we have fishing only restricted to
certain regions of the UK where it's doing really well of of
and, and able to flourish and, and we lose it from other parts
of the coastline, What are we actually losing?
If that happened now? We haven't had that debate.
And that's the debate we really need to have at policy level
because from the the analysis that we've done and published,
we can see very clearly that there are certain parts of the
UK that are in the red and their fleets are dwindling.
So what do we do to respond to that?
And also recognising the impact on rural areas, because so many
of our rural areas have this very small, small harbours,
medium sized harbours. Some of the fishing boats are
beach landed without any harbour.
And so, so we know that in those areas, you know, loss of small
scale fishing will will result in a loss of all fishing in
those areas because they only are able to accommodate smaller
boats. And obviously the larger scale
operations need a a much bigger port and have a more diverse
fleet in those regions. So, So what about those, those
more rural areas, you know, you know what, what is going to
happen to protect rural small scale fisheries?
That's, that's a hugely important part of the
conversation because there's so much emphasis now on the
importance of, you know, regrowth and regeneration and
economic stability in, in our coastal rural areas who are
already suffering layers of disadvantage relative to inland
areas. You know, there's been lots of
evidence and research published on, on coastal deprivation and,
and the, the state of coastal, our coastal economies.
So really highlighting the importance of maintaining A
viable fishery in those areas is is also part of this discussion.
I think there's something really important to look at.
So I'm, I'm going to be a bit Whitby centric here, but I'm
sure it translates to a lot of other ports.
Now our, our economic landings in Whitby, I think comes about
£1,000,000 a year in the crab and lobster.
But I think that you can probably times that by 10 in
what we bring into the tourism sector.
I don't think that the, the, the tourist industry would exist in
these, these, these small harbours, these small ports
without the fishing industry. And unfortunately fishermen are
the, the biggest victims of this, this tourist industry in a
lot of ways through, you know, things such as the cost of
living, cost of housing. But put that to a side for a
second through, through this, through bringing such a huge
amount of tourism to these rural communities, It provides for a
lot of the, a lot of the local environments, a lot of the, the
local businesses. And that that's, you know,
something else where we, we need to be preserved.
We need to be thought of better because it we're creating
hundreds and hundreds of jobs on the side.
I just wanted to nip that one in really quick and I'll, I'll.
Put the microphone off again, a really valuable point.
Yeah, I think it's probably worth maybe just mentioning some
of the the other things that have been happening as a
consequence of consortium. I mean, your question a moment
ago about about, you know, how we're engaging with them, the
Defra's and Mmos and so on and and how we, you know, push this
work forward and whether we're not we're going to get listened
to. Part of part of what we've been
doing within the the consortium is is helping set up a network
for fishermen. So although there are fishermen
in the consortium, we're not all fishers and there's a danger
then that the the agenda of fishers or fishers voices
themself are not are not being let you know, Fisher LED.
And I think so one of the things we're doing in the consortium is
trying to, to look at the issues and, and, and give voice to the
fishers. But one of the, one of the
things we really want to do is, is make sure that it's fishermen
front and centre. And so part of what's happened
as a consequence of those meetings is, is, is this
identification of the, the, the lack of a dedicated small scale
Fisher voice in England and the lack of a dedicated organisation
to, to, to take that voice to the various meetings.
And, and as a part of that, the, there's an attempt to keep a
small scale Fisher's network in England.
And this is very much Fisher LED on it.
It's, it's by Fisher's for Fishers, which is kind of
slightly different than the consortium.
So it's, it's, it's been sort of seed funded by some of the, the
funding that that we have had within the consortium.
And then it's being initiated by some of the people who have been
engaged with the consortium. But the, the, the whole idea is
it's a network of fishermen. The fisheries network itself has
to be for fishers, by fishers. And so although it's, it's
connected to the consortium, it's not us that's doing it, if
that makes any sense. But I think it's very much worth
mentioning that that is something that's grown
organically off the back of this process.
So I think really we've, we've covered everything now and
that's a really good discussion. Just to reiterate that the
January edition of the Marine Biologist magazine, it's a
special edition that focuses on the work of the insure and small
scale fisheries consortium and includes the vision and the
priorities for the sector. So it's it's a privilege for us
here at the Marine Biological Association to work with with
you all and to help promote the consortium and get the word out
for the small scale and ensure fishers.
That's great. Well, thank you all very much,
Sarah Bally and George. It's been a pleasure and we look
forward to keeping up with the work of the consortium in the
future. OK, thanks again.
Well. Thank you very much for having
us. Cheers now.
Cheers. Thank you.
Have a good afternoon. We hope you enjoyed the podcast.
Become a member of the Marine Biological Association, the part
of a global community advocating for the ocean.
You'll receive 4 copies of our beautifully produced magazine,
Marine Biologists, and a host of other benefits.
Simply visit www.nba.ac.uk For more information.