Recommendations

It is clear that many sensitivity and vulnerability assessment procedures have been developed in the marine environment. No one method can be applied directly to an assessment of the vulnerability of marine habitats to commercial fishing activities at the scale examined (the habitat group). The Beaumaris approach (Hall et al. 2008) is the closest in focus (i.e. developed solely to address fishing impacts) but does not address ‘resistance’ (recovery), habitat recovery, or vulnerability. Nevertheless, much of the expertise and techniques developed in the last ten years can contribute to the development of a vulnerability assessment procedure.

Recommendation 1 – the development of a risk assessment for commercial fisheries

activities within WFD requires a targeted approach that builds on existing expertise.

Recommendation 2 – any sensitivity assessment procedure needs a clear definition of

the management questions it is designed to answer, and decisions it is designed to support, the scale at which it is to be applied and hence its limitations outside that remit.

With this in mind, it is recommended that while acknowledging the risk assessment has distinct management aims, consideration should be given to engagement with other forums where sensitivity assessment frameworks are being developed for a range of issues. For example, the conservation agencies and others are working towards Marine Protected Area planning as part of the provisions of the Marine Bill. The results of ‘Charting Progress 2’, the 2010 review of the status of the UK’s marine environment, will also create impetus for the development of frameworks for assessing sensitivity across a range of issues.

Recommendation 3 - engagement with other agencies and their approaches is a

potentially cost-effective way of drawing on a range of expertise, producing a widely supported methodology while reducing replication of effort.

The following recommendations relate more specifically to methodological requirements.

Clear definitions of terms, and activities are also vital to the success of the approach and, especially, how it communicates with stakeholders. The terms ‘resistance’ and ‘resilience’ (Hollings 1978) are relatively robust terms with clear definitions.

Intolerance, recoverability, sensitivity and vulnerability also have been carefully and exactly defined many times (Hiscock 1999; Laffoley et al. 2000; Tyler-Walters et al. 2005). But the latter definitions are open to perception, as many consider ‘sensitivity’ to be equivalent to ‘intolerance’ and most stakeholders are likely to have a

preconception of what they mean by sensitivity. Similarly, ‘vulnerability’ is open to mis- interpretation and many users and stakeholders do not distinguish between ‘vulnerable’ and ‘sensitive’. Therefore, the term ‘risk’ may be more appropriate, and is widely used. Both ‘vulnerability’ and ‘risk’ incorporate a component of ‘hazard’ (i.e. likelihood of impact occurring) and ‘consequence’ (i.e. likelihood of damage or sensitivity).

Recommendation 4 – the terms ‘resistance’ and ‘resilience’ should be used in

preference to ‘intolerance’, ‘recoverability’, and ‘risk’ in preference to ‘vulnerability’. In addition, the approach designed must decide on the amount of expert judgement vs. empirical analysis included. Empirical techniques have vastly improved but still suffer from data gaps, and modelled approaches (e.g. Hiddink et al. 2007) are very limited in their scope (i.e. the scale to which they can be applied and number of parameters they include). But empirical approaches have the advantage of being more objective and

However, expert judgement has the potential to collate more data and can include more parameters, while also engaging with stakeholders and capturing local knowledge that an empirical methodology could miss. Expert judgement has the potential advantage of compensating for data gaps by capturing knowledge that is not in the public domain or in a digital format. Nevertheless, disagreement between experts can undermine the approach. Audit trails of decision making and the provision of confidence assessments can improve transparency and allow assessments to be repeated and updated based on new information.

Overall, the authors would suggest a mixed approach, in which a systematic approach is developed to assess habitat ‘sensitivity’ and ‘risk’, the approach is used to derive ‘risk assessments’ and then validated by peer review by a panel of experts.

Recommendation 5 – the approach developed should include a systematic approach

to assess ‘sensitivity’ and ‘risk’ followed by expert validation.

The above discourse suggests two ways in which to take forward the development of a risk assessment methodology for the effects of commercial fishing activities on marine habitats under WFD. Both approaches assume the development of an ecological risk assessment method.

i. Redevelopment of the approaches of MarLIN, and Hall et al. (2008) to include fishing intensity data, to derive ‘risk’.

ii. Developments of a more empirical approach based on biological, habitat and community traits, in a systematic manner, and fishing intensity data to derive risk, using peer review and stakeholder review.

The first approach would be the simplest to achieve but would be primarily expert judgement driven. It would involve the use of relevant expertise to review the evidence base and rank habitat groups by their sensitivity, exposure to fishing activities and hence risk, followed by expert working groups (on a habitat type basis) to review and amend the assessments made. This approach would be the quickest to implement, although it should be noted that the Beaumaris approach (Hall et al. 2008) has taken several years to develop and implement.

The second approach would require further research but has the potential to be more objective, and to answer the questions specifically required under WFD.

Recommendation6 – any systematic risk assessment approach should include the

following elements:

i. Clear definition of aims, limitations, and terms (as above)

ii. Clear definition of fishing activities – as defined by CCW (Hall et al. 2008) iii. Clear definition of acceptable and unacceptable levels of habitat

damage/loss against which to assess sensitivity, e.g. either based on damage to the habitat (e.g. MarLIN, Hiscock and Tyler-Walters 2006) or against WFD criteria (i.e. ecological status).

iv. Information on fishing intensity for the inshore and local fleets, including small boats and recreational activities.

v. Development of a suite of parameters to describe those biological traits of relevant species, physical traits of habitats, and community traits that affect a habitats likelihood of damage from fishing activities at a variety of

vi. Development of a suite of parameters to describe those biological traits of relevant species, physical traits of habitats, and community traits that affect a habitats rate of recovery from disturbance.

vii. Systematic use of these parameters in a conceptual model, regression models or multivariate (non-parametric) analyses to develop an overall estimator of sensitivity.

viii. Mapping and systematic characterisation of habitat groups (based on available habitat maps).

ix. Mapping of fishing intensity against sensitivity to derive exposure and risk. x. Expert judgment at each stage to manage data gaps.

xi. Final peer review of resultant habitat risk maps.

A risk based approach would entail methodologies to derive probabilities of damage (resistance) and recovery (resilience), and hence sensitivities. However, the second approach would necessitate a longer development time.

Overall, there is enough data, evidence and expertise to develop a systematic approach to the assessment of the vulnerability (and risk) of marine habitats to commercial fishing activities. But, before a methodology can be developed, clear decisions need to be made about the management and conservation questions the approach needs to answer, and the user group (or stakeholder group) that will need to understand and implement management.