EveryFish

Context

The main goal of fisheries management is to secure the long-term exploitation of fish stocks, by setting quotas based on the best available science. By doing so, fishers are only allowed to catch an amount that still secures the long-term reproductive capacity of these fish stocks. Still, overfishing is a problem. Last year, the EU missed its own target – the cornerstone goal in the 2013 reform of the EU’s Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) to end overfishing by 2020. The EU also missed UN’s SDG target 14.41 to end illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing, as well as overfishing, by 2020 so that fish stocks can be restored to levels that will produce maximum sustainable yields (MSY).

Objective

To contribute to reaching these targets as soon as possible, EveryFish represents a close collaboration among research, academic, industry, and governance actors, and technology providers across the EU and other European countries. EveryFish will provide technological innovations that will enable automatic and correct reporting of the catch in terms of the size, weight, and species, thereby providing verifiable catch information and improving compliance with fisheries regulations. This will contribute to a reduction in discards, stop IUU fishing and promote sustainable fishing activities by reducing overfishing.

Summarizing, EveryFish will develop, test, and promote a suite of innovative technological solutions for fully automated catch recording and reporting for use on board European fishing vessels, and develop innovative governance strategies that make use of the automatically reported catch data.