Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if he will take steps to require supertrawlers operating within UK waters to (a) publish catch records, including species discard, (b) report dolphin or other sensitive species bycatch and (c) be transparent with data so that consumer labelling can accurately identify seafood caught using sustainable fishing methods and minimised bycatch.

The Marine Management Organisation publishes annual statistics on catch, effort and fleet data in aggregated from which includes catch by gear type:

https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/marine-management-organisation/about/statistics. The UK discard/bycatch information, derived from scientific fisheries observer programmes in each of the UK administrations, is the EU Scientific, Technical and Economic Committee for Fisheries (STECF) database. Data collected up to the end of 2020 have been submitted to the EU STECF in accordance with UK obligations and can be found here: Fisheries Dependent Information - European Commission (europa.eu)

All wild-capture commercial fishers are required to report incidental mortality or injury (bycatch) of marine mammals during fishing operations to the Marine Management Organisation. These data are used in UK bycatch monitoring programmes to help identify and where possible reduce potential impacts with sensitive marine species. The UK government funds a comprehensive and well-respected bycatch monitoring programme, which provides essential observer data on incidents of sensitive species bycatch. Annual reports are published online here: Defra, UK - Science Search.

UK regulations require fishery and aquaculture product labelling to indicate the production method, area where the product was caught or farmed, and category of fishing gear used in capture of fisheries.