R132: Innovation and new technology
Published 14 February 2019
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1. Requirement overview
1.1 Requirement detail
Technology is evolving at an ever increasing rate. Whilst the MMO has established efficient systems for delivering its functions there may be increased efficiency and/or effectiveness if new technologies were implemented in MMO operations. There is a large amount of work happening in this field globally, the difficulty is in developing a full understanding of what work is underway and how these new technologies could provide improvements to the MMO.
1.2 MMO use
Staying up-to-date with new technological developments could provide opportunities to do things better and more efficiently.
The MMO is responsible for:
- managing and monitoring fishing fleet sizes and quotas for catches
- ensuring compliance with fisheries regulations, such as fishing vessel licences, time at sea and quotas for fish and seafood
- managing funding programmes for fisheries activities
- planning and licensing for marine construction, deposits and dredging that may have an environmental, economic or social impact
- making marine nature conservation byelaws & Marine Protected Areas (MPAs)
- dealing with marine pollution emergencies, including oil spills
- helping to prevent illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing worldwide
- producing marine plans to include all marine activities, including those we don’t directly regulate
- enforcing wildlife legislation and issuing wildlife licences
More details can be found here
Blue Belt Programme:
In addition to general improvements to MMO operations the MMO is a key delivery partner of the Blue Belt programme and has specific technology requirements in this area. The Blue Belt Programme (2016 to 2020) supports delivery of the U.K. Government’s manifesto commitment to provide long term protection of over four million square kilometres of marine environment across the UK Overseas Territories (UKOT). The Blue Belt Programme is initially focused on seven islands and archipelagos: British Indian Ocean Territory, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, British Antarctic Territory, Pitcairn, St Helena, Ascension Island and Tristan da Cunha.
The innovation and new technology requirements of the Blue Belt Programme relate to monitoring and prediction:
Monitoring - The MMO wishes to investigate technological innovative solutions to enhance and increase the range of tools currently utilised for MPA management and fisheries control and enforcement.
Prediction - The MMO wishes to investigate scientific and technological techniques to predict where and when fishing vessel effort will occur in and around the UKOTs. This will allow potentially more effective deployment of fisheries assets to look at the highest risks to the territory.
1.3 External interest
There is wide interest in this field including, government departments, private industry and academia
2. Aims and objectives
Work under this requirement relates to:
- identifying potential innovations or new technologies of use to the MMO
- evaluating the proposed innovations or technologies to determine practical applicability in their current form
- identifying work to increase the technological readiness level of the preferred innovations or technologies
3. Existing evidence
3.1 Academic
This is a large area of study, a recent paper specifically in fisheries management is Gorospe et al 2016 which looked at science and technology innovations to deliver an ecosystem approach to fisheries management in Southeast Asia, where a survey was carried out to elucidate and prioritise the implementation of these innovations.
3.2 Other
This is a high profile requirement, a recent announcement by Oliver Dowden the UK Minister for Implementation talked about a new upcoming UK Innovation strategy and the need to avoid choosing popular new technologies for the sake of it but rather understand where the needs are and what new technologies are available, and then come up with a coherent strategy around that.
4. Current activity
There are a number of key areas MMO is currently working on:
- Technology – Fisheries - Compliance teams and the Blue Belt team are investigating technologies for surveillance purposes and predicting fishing effort.
- Science – Fisheries - MMO is investigating forensic scientific techniques to validate the origin of capture of fish and the method of capture.
- Data - The Transformation team are looking at new fisheries reporting systems. Defra’s Digital, Data and Technology Services (DDTS) team has an Emerging Technology Radar project which has 9 key themes: Artificial Intelligence (AI), Big Data Analytics, Internet of Things (IoT), Blockchain, 5G, Robotic Process Automation, Virtual and Augmented Reality, Cloud Office and IT Infrastructure Services.
- Technology Roadmaps project – A Blue Belt procurement exercise is starting in March 2019. This will be to commission a consultant group to produce technology roadmaps for each of the OTs, outlining tech that might be relevant in the short, medium and longer term.
5. Associated evidence requirements
R063 - Innovative and novel approaches to enforcement R109 - Novel technologies to reduce risks to marine protected areas
6. Further details
For more information or to add further research to the existing evidence list please email evidence@marinemanagement.org.uk
More information on the Blue Belt Programme can be found here, and on our Blog page here