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Due to the recent tightening of regulations surrounding the disposal of seafood processing waste to landfill, fish and shellfish processors are now facing a rise in the cost and difficulty of waste disposal. This is of particular concern in remote areas where alternative uses (e.g. fishmeal) are neither accessible nor economically viable and therefore, cost effective and environmentally-sound solutions to the disposal of this waste need to be found. This report examines the potential for disposal at sea, together with the likely impacts and advice on the selection of appropriate sites for disposal.

Throughout much of the UK, the native oyster remains in a severely depleted state in the wild, having suffered for two centuries with over-exploitation, pests, disease, pollution and harsh winters. The native oyster is a Biodiversity Action Plan Species. Native oyster beds can form a flourishing part of the ecosystem, with many associated species. A significant driver for restoration of native oyster beds should therefore be re-creating and conserving an ecological resource in order to re-establish a biotope that was once common and covered wide areas of the UK inshore seabed.

The report summarised here has been commissioned by the Sea Fish Industry Authority (SEAFISH) with the aim of determining the potential impact of fisheries on EMS interest features and site integrity in relation to their conservation objectives.

The Shellfish Stakeholder Working Group (SSWG) commissioned Seafish to undertake a review of the application of the Official Control Regulations that apply to live bivalve production in EU Member States, with a focus on the microbial requirements.

This spreadsheet is an assessment of the ecological effects of commercial fishing in waters off Southwest England (ICES Divisions VII e,f,g & h).

Quay Issues is a magazine for the fishing industry. This edition of Quay Issues shines a light on the way in which some businesses are rising to the challenges that the sector faces.

This report reviews ecosystem risk assessment methods and describes in detail the method evolved in Australia by CSIRO.

The seafood industry uses a large amount of frozen raw material. Much of this requires thawing before further use or processing. Companies typically thaw seafood in-house using a range of different methods. These vary from using water, air or steam through to microwave and radio frequency systems. The type of thawing method used is dependent on many factors including cost, throughput, timescale, size, efficiency and effect on quality amongst other things. Currently there is a lack of comprehensive, up to date information on seafood thawing, making it difficult for processors to understand the process, the relative merits of each type of available system and how and where the process can go wrong. This document is a compilation of available information on the thawing of seafood. It includes; - A summary of the key scientific principles of seafood thawing - An overview of relevant UK and EU legislation - A description of current UK thawing practice, highlighting good manufacturing practice and problem areas. - Information on different thawing systems and methods - A review of new technologies, and - Sources of further information and advice.

The study covered fisheries from northwest Norway through the North Sea, English Channel/la Manche, Cantabrian Sea and Algarve to the French Mediterranean. It was carried out as a series of tasks. Task 1, preparation, involved reviewing each partner’s national fisheries and establishing liaison groups of fishermen and other industry members; Task 2, quantifying lost gear, required the partners to interview fishermen to establish their experiences of gear loss and then the survey the areas where losses were reported; Task 3, physical evolution, started with the retrieval of ‘naturally lost’ gears and then moved on to a series of exercises simulating gear loss and monitoring how the ‘lost’ gears changed over time; Task 4, ecosystem impacts, involved interpreting catch data from the experimental gears, raising the data to métier level and comparing the results to targeted commercial catches; Task 5, mitigating measures, established a sub-group to look at the ways in which gear loss is treated elsewhere, matched those approaches to the European fisheries and assessed the likely benefits of alternate strategies; Task 6, ran throughout the project and involved industry liaison, reporting and other dissemination. The work required a relatively high level of industry liaison. In practical terms this meant that each national partner set up a national advisory group (NAG) to guide the work and to ensure that the sea trials and recommendations were representative and realistic. The NAGs were mainly made up of experienced skippers but also included net riggers and other professionals as appropriate. This report, wherever possible, follows the sequence of tasks described above.

A collaborative project was set up to monitor the performance of a new oyster growing system in a high energy environment, the Solway coastline, to investigate the performance of the system and to monitor any environmental changes that might be associated with its placement. The project suffered from serious losses of experimental trials and available growth data that is limited. Solway Marine Oysters have learnt a great deal about how to manage the system and there are indicationsfrom the data that regular sorting and redistribution of the oysters to optimize their size. The oysters produced are of good shape and free of any epibionts. A measurable change in the sediment and fauna associated with the location of the line was detected but whether this was due to the presence of the fixing posts, the growing bags themselves or other changes is not certain. Changes in the fauna were most likely related to the slight changes in the sediment present. The value of thetraining opportunity to one of the Solway Marine Oysters staff is acknowledged and there is an ongoing cooperation between the company and BST Ltd to further improve the operation of the system.

he Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute (AFBI), Seafish and the Northern Ireland (NI) Scallop Association have recently completed a report investigating the optimal areas for scallop reseeding in the Irish Sea. This work was commissioned due to an increase in exploitation of scallops around the NI coastline and a desire by industry to be proactive in enhancing long-term sustainability of stocks. Sites selected through industry engagement as proposed reseeding sites were examined by AFBI scientists to ensure that they met the characteristics required for successful settlement of scallops. Seabed habitat maps were combined to provide information for the full sea area under consideration. Scallop catches from the annual AFBI scallop survey were mapped with the full habitat map to determine the areas where scallops were present and identify the underlying habitat type. This allowed a map to be created which showed the suitable habitat for adult scallops within NI waters. All of the proposed reseeding sites fell within areas of suitable habitat. To examine further characteristics of the proposed sites, a combination of measured and modelled data was used. Salinity, food availability, bed stress (natural physical disturbance of the seabed by wave action and/or tidal currents), particulate inorganic matter, suspended particulate matter, abundance of predators, spawning season, larval dispersal and hydrodynamic models were all considered. The above information was presented to the project steering group, and using the data provided, the steering group selected the most suitable sites for reseeding from the original 13 proposed sites. Three reseeding sites (Whitehead, Drumfad Bay and South Bay) have initially been proposed, with a fourth, Roaring Rock, having potential for any future reseeding plans. The NI Scallop Association will now present the results of this work to DAERA to ask for regulation to assist in the protection of these new areas through a ban on mobile fishing gear.