Catalogue description Records of Fisheries

Fisheries Department: Functions

Since 1903, all fisheries functions have been performed by a separate Fisheries Department within the Board and succeeding Ministries. At first its functions were mainly regulatory, its powers over deep-sea fishing being extremely limited. From the beginning, however, it was concerned with the collection and dissemination of information and, increasingly, with research into both freshwater and deep sea fishing.

Today it is responsible for the promotion, protection and regulation of sea fishing operations, nationally and internationally, with the regulation and conservation of inshore fisheries and with salmon and freshwater fisheries.

A committee headed by Lord Fleck inquired into the size and structure of the United Kingdom's fishing industry in 1957-1961, and following the committee's report the Sea Fish Industry Act 1962 was passed, allowing for a further ten years' financial support for the industry, through operational subsidies and grants and loans to build and modernise vessels.

Further measures to support the industry were included in the Sea Fish Industry Act 1970. The department maintains close liaison with the fishing industry on the coast and deals with problems affecting supplies, transport and the general welfare of fishermen and the industry. It is also responsible for research work and for collecting and publishing statistics about commercial sea fisheries.

It has general supervisory powers over the activities of the White Fish Authority and the Herring Industry Board and is directly responsible for the administration of fishery subsidies covering white fish and herring. Until 1960 the United Kingdom had a sizeable whaling industry, which was jointly supervised by the department and the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries for Scotland. The department continues to liaise with the International Whaling Commission.

A Herring Industry Board was established under the Herring Industry Act 1935, with powers to develop and regulate the herring industry, to carry out schemes for market development and research and to provide financial assistance by way of loans for construction and reconditioning of boats and acquisition of nets and gear.

The Fisheries Department also has responsibility for various government fisheries laboratories.

Fisheries Divisions: Organisation

A divisional organisation first emerged in the department in 1957 with the department being divided into first two and then (1972) three numbered divisions. Of these, Fisheries Division I dealt with research and development, salmon and fresh-water fishing, marine pollution, the local Sea Fisheries Committees, and, when the industry developed, fish farming. Division II handled the organisation and structure of the sea fishing industry (including shellfish), marketing of fish and the fish trade, harbours, statistics and economic policy relating to fisheries.

Division III handled legal matters, including the law of the sea, national fishing limits and fisheries protection, the conservation of fish and whale stocks, and from 1973 the EEC common fisheries policy and community fish catch quotas.

In 1976 there was a reorganisation of the divisional structure, responsibility for harbours and shellfish passing to Division I (though harbours returned to Division II in 1978) and responsibility for the structure of the industry passing from Division II to a new Fisheries Division IV, which in 1978 assumed responsibility for the fisheries protection services and quotas. Responsibility for whales passed to Division III, and by 1983 Division IV also had responsibility for salmon and fresh-water fisheries, shellfish, fish farming and the sea fisheries committees.

In 1985 the number of divisions was reduced to three, and the accumulated functions of Division IV were reallocated to the remaining three divisions. At the same time, responsibility for research and development was removed from Division I and a new Directorate of Fisheries Research was established; and likewise a Marine Environmental Protection Division was set up.

The Fisheries Laboratories at Lowestoft and Burnham-on-Crouch, the Fisheries Radiobiological Laboratory at Lowestoft, the Fisheries Experiment Station, Conwy, the Salmon and Freshwater Fisheries Laboratory, London, and the Fish Diseases Laboratory, Weymouth were grouped administratively within the Fisheries Department in a Directorate of Fisheries Research in 1981, to provide research support to the four administrative fisheries divisions.

In 1994, the number of Fisheries Divisions was again expanded to four: Division I handled structural policy for the UK fishing fleet, including decommissioning, EU funding and state aid; Division II dealt with shellfish, fish farming, trade and marketing issues, hygiene and statistics; Division III was responsible for the common fisheries policy, quotas and conservation of stocks, the law of the sea and fishery limits and the sea fisheries committees; Division IV administered the UK fishing quota, licensing of vessels and enforcement policy.

Responsibility for salmon and inland fisheries and whaling and liaison with the National Rivers Authority (later the Environment Agency) passed to a Salmon, Whaling and Inland Fisheries Division in the Environment Policy Department.

Fish Research Laboratories

The idea of a government laboratory concerned with fish preservation was first proposed in 1918 by the Fish Preservation Committee of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research. The Torry Research Station was opened at Aberdeen in 1929 by the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, with the financial assistance of the Empire Marketing Board. The station passed under the control of the Ministry of Technology in 1965, to the Department of Trade and Industry in 1970, and to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food in 1972. The station's purpose was the study of preservation methods for fish and, increasingly from 1979, contract work investigating the freezing and preservation of other foodstuffs. The station was closed in August 1996, its functions being split and in part privatised: some passed to the University of Aberdeen, others to the Scottish Agricultural and Biological Research Institute (the Rowett Institute in Aberdeen), others to the Scottish Office's Agriculture, Environment and Fisheries Department Marine Laboratory, while a few functions reverted to the Ministry's Central Science Laboratory.

The Ministry also conducts research into live fish stocks, for which the main centre is the Fisheries Laboratory, Lowestoft, Suffolk, which studies the exploitation of commercial fisheries. A subsidiary site, the Fisheries Radiobiological Laboratory at Hamilton Dock, Lowestoft, conducted monitoring of radioactive discharges into fresh and sea water from various nuclear industrial sites until it was closed in 1981. Research on inshore and shellfish fisheries is carried out at the Fisheries Laboratory, Burnham-on-Crouch, Essex, and the Fisheries Experiment Station, Conwy, North Wales.

Research into diseases of fish is carried out at the Fish Diseases Laboratory, Weymouth, Dorset. For many years, the Ministry maintained a Salmon and Freshwater Fisheries Laboratory in the basement of its headquarters building in Whitehall, Londom, but this was closed in 1981. In April 1997 the remaining laboratories were established as an executive agency, the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (CEFAS), with the headquarters at Lowestoft, at which time CEFAS assumed responsibility for MAFF records relating to the operations of the various research stations.