Feasibility study for a survey of fishers

Our seas and oceans are an integral part of our history, economy and way of life. Leaving the EU and the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) gives us the opportunity to introduce a sustainable, responsive and resilient new fisheries policy. The decisions we make will be critical for protecting our seascapes and species, and also for preserving their beauty for future generations. With responsibility for ensuring we have clean, healthy, safe, productive, and biodiverse oceans and seas, our priorities are to implement policies for sustainable fisheries and to achieve good environmental status of our seas while allowing marine industries to thrive. Understanding fishers' socio-demographic characteristics, their operations, attitudes, knowledge and behaviour is important for shaping successful policy, operations and communications across the UK, and thus helping to deliver clean, healthy, safe, productive and biodiverse oceans and seas. There are a number of existing ad-hoc surveys as well as the introduction of social variables under the EU Data Collection Framework (DCF). These have demonstrated the value of socio-demographic data and provide a useful starting point. This area is also a rapidly evolving field of study and therefore leaving the EU offers us a good opportunity to consider what data (on socio-demographics, fishers' operations, attitudes, knowledge and behaviour) we should be collecting and the best way to collect this.