Fishing for solutions

Sustainable fishing? Professor Douglas Neil is on board with the idea. The animal physiologist’s work monitoring the handling of langoustines as they journey to restaurant plates across Europe is helping fishermen improve their practice, raise the quality of their product and may even provide a sustainable solution to the overfishing crisis.

Langoustine is a valuable seafood resource, second in value only to mackerel in the UK. With 75% of the UK’s langoustine industry based in Scotland, Professor Neil has found himself in just the right spot to study the breakdown processes in the sea creatures’ muscles, which affects the quality of their meat.

‘The muscle starts to degenerate as soon as the animal is caught,’ explains Professor Neil. Taken out of its environment, the langoustine is exposed to air and higher temperatures, both of which speed up the post-mortem processes and make it easier for bacteria to invade. ‘Our aim is to improve the handling practice on deck to preserve quality from the point when the langoustine gets out of the sea, so they can travel alive all the way to Spain, for example.’

‘We want to get the fishermen to take more ownership of their industry rather than just grab all they can and pass it down the line. We cannot go by tales such as when the moon is full and the tide is high, you will catch more. We need to know something about these animals.’ Professor Douglas Neil

Professor Neil is working alongside a group of parasitologists, biochemists and microbiologists within the School of Life Sciences at the University. They are discovering that a smaller intake of high quality langoustine can yield the same profit as a large intake of low quality product. This may allow fishing intensity to be reduced in line with the Scottish Parliament’s plans for sustainable managed fisheries. 

Turning the tide

 ‘Langoustine is a species caught by fishermen using the same methods as to catch cod,’ says Professor Neil. ‘So having bought the equipment and being told they can’t chase cod anymore – the quota’s been reduced to virtually nil – they can switch their efforts to catch langoustine instead. Also, langoustines will not, as you might fear, be the next in the line of fish dominos to fall over.’ Living in underground burrow systems, they only come to the surface for about 10 per cent of the day. In their most vulnerable stages – the nursery stages or when females carry their eggs – they never appear at all. ‘So, however much you fish, it will only be a small percentage of the whole stock,’ continues Professor Neil. ‘They have an inbuilt sustainability in their biology.’

Working in close cooperation with processors like Young’s Seafood and Scotprime, the University researchers are in a unique position: ‘Working in an integrated way with industrial partners we’ve got a bit of a lead here,’ says Professor Neil. With a new project on the horizon to test a net that may help reduce ‘by-catch’ – other fish also caught while trawling for langoustines – it seems likely that the team will remain at the helm of this important research for some time to come.