Boat International - February 2016

Highly commended – Boyan Slat

CEO of The Ocean Cleanup

For – his design of a system involving floating barriers to capture plastic debris

that has now raised almost $2.2 million towards funding the pilot phase. He hopes the

first 2,000 metre system of barriers will be deployed in the Pacific in 2016

Highly commended – Dr Jon Copley

Associate professor of marine ecology at the University of Southampton

For–launchingExploringOurOceans,afreesix-weekinteractiveonline

introduction to marine science, the only one of its kind, that has already been

taken up by more than 10,000 students from all over the world

“I

was at Rockall Bank as a 10 year old with the old line

boats,” remembers Mike Park, whose career began

as a fisherman but is now chief executive of the

Scottish White Fish Producers Association (SWFPA), which

represents 170 individual vessels and 1,400 fishers with

a collective turnover approaching €200 million. “How my

father allowed it, I’m not sure, but I used to go out on boats

at weekends and all through the summer holidays. After I left

school I became a fisherman, and by 21 I had my first 25 metre

trawler and a crew of eight. I was the youngest by 14 years and

was expected to deliver by putting money in their pockets.”

But fishers know that their livelihood depends on there

being fish in the sea. “Remember, ours is a brutal industry,”

he continues. “You’re self-employed and you can only make

money by being smarter, more ruthless and harder working

than the next guy. Our industry is full of alpha males. It’s

Darwinian. It’s survival of the fittest. Fishermen don’t

necessarily want to be rich but they want to be richer than

the guy next to them.”

Park therefore takes a pragmatic view of ocean

conservation. “The Greens talk about a good environment

beingbuiltongreencredentials.I’lldeliveryouthesame

built on business principles because the two come to

thesamepoint.”

Since 2010, the SWFPA has been remotely monitoring the

discarding of cod by means of an onboard electronic system

installedonfishingboats.Thecatch-quotaschemeisstill

under trial and has fed into the recent reform of the EU’s

Common Fisheries Policy, but fishers’ willingness to sign up

tocatchquotasindicatesthattheyareopentopursuingnew

ways of operating. “If you can remove financial pressures, you

remove archaic behaviour. That’s the essence of it,” says Park.

TheSWFPAhasalsointroducedaseriesofannual,

seasonal closures to protect spawning aggregations at various

times of the year and has worked to improve nets, promoting

theuseofthosethatreducethecaptureofcodby60percent.

That the Marine Conservation Society removed cod from its

list of “fish to avoid ” last October is in part thanks to this.

Winner – Projects*

THE SCOT TISH

WHITE FISH PRODUCERS

ASSOCIATION

Represented by Mike Park, chief executive

For – its work to save North Sea cod, the results of which have

been reflected in the improved ICES (International Council

for the Exploration of the Sea) stock assessment in 2015

THE OCEAN AWARDS 2016

• Criteria – the ocean project that has achieved the most in the past year

http://www.boatinternational.com | February 2016

JUDGE #2 PRINCESS ZAHR A AGA KHAN
“As a family we have always spent a lot of time on or near the sea, and it has always been the great love of my life,” says Princess Zahra. “I believe that it’s too late to reverse the molecular-level
pollution in all the seas and oceans of our planet, but we can do a great deal to improve human behaviour, to reduce pollution and overfishing, and therefore to improve the habitat of
ocean flora and fauna around the world.” Hence her commitment to “raising awareness about these crucial issues”.
Educated at Harvard and based in Geneva, where she was born, she works for her father, His Highness the Aga Khan, managing the health and education services of the Aga
Khan Development Network, which oversees not-for-profit health and education programmes and institutions in 12 countries. But she spends what leisure time she has by, on, or better
yet in the sea (she is president of the Yacht Club Costa Smeralda in Sardinia). “I started diving aged 15 and became a divemaster in 1991,” she says. “I have witnessed first-hand the
degradation of the ocean environment around the world, with ever increasing visible and invisible pollution, dwindling fish populations, climate-afected reefs and
man-made population swings.”