Sea fishing - Firth of Clyde seasonal closures: Operation Galene

Process

Tasking of Marine Directorate assets is the responsibility of the Risk and Intelligence Team. Operation Galene will be one of the top national priorities for the first two weeks of the closure, after which they will review the operation and any intelligence or incidents and determine if further specific tasking is required, or revert to risk based tasking.

Any incidents will be fed in through the Marine Directorate intelligence system. Observed catches should be recorded on the Firth of Clyde cod recording form. All discards of fish are required to be recorded on a vessel’s electronic logbook and have to be landed at port, with any observations of cod in catches being passed to the relevant landing port through the intelligence system. Checks should be undertaken at the landing port, where possible, to ensure fishers comply with the landing obligation regulations.

VMS data, sightings, intelligence and weather, will all feed in to the tasking as they would normally. No specific processes are required at this stage.