Application of Environmental Management Systems to Meet Bycatch and Energy Conservation Goals

An Environmental Management System (EMS) is a systematic process that enables a group of fishermen to identify, manage and reduce their impact on the environment. An EMS is a voluntary process that can help fishermen identify, prioritize, and address their regulatory and non-regulatory responsibilities, and it is a working document that is periodically refined to help prepare them to meet current and future challenges and flag areas requiring additional resources and effort. Additional key outcomes and benefits of an EMS include an increase in operating efficiency and profitability, seafood quality and value, and employee safety.

For the past three years, the Gulf of Maine Research Institute has partnered with a small community of fishermen in Port Clyde, Maine to apply the EMS process and achieve systematic improvements in trawl selectivity and fuel conservation. This includes evaluating the selectivity of 6.5-inch diamond and square mesh codends, a 7.0-inch square mesh codend, and a 6.5-inch composite diamond and square mesh codend. We also compared the geometry and fuel consumption of a traditional Cushman trawl constructed from 6.0-inch netting using 3.0 mm diameter twine against an experimental Cushman trawl constructed from 7.0-inch netting using 2.1 mm diameter twine.

More recently we commenced an energy audit to identify major sources of energy consumption and evaluate potential options to bring about savings in fuel consumption. This presentation will describe the application of the EMS process and associated improvements with this group of fishermen, including the results of gear modification to improve selectivity and fuel conservation. The strengths and weaknesses of this process, including potential marketing opportunities that arise from the use of such a process, will also be discussed.