36 accommodation facilities are often available, many vessels can solely be used for trawling. Investment in an upgrade of the vessel only seems to be an option when subsidiary activities account for a substantial part of the revenues. Driven by the recent economic recession and reduced fishing quota, new partnerships between commercial players and fishing vessel owners in Norway have emerged over the last few years. It quickly turned out that fishing vessels can perform at much lower costs (even up to 50%) than dedicated offshore and specialized research vessels. This makes it attractive to offer fishing vessels and the related marine know-how and competence through a centralized system, whereby vessel owners can allocate projects among themselves. In Norway there is a regulatory obstacle to this development: fishing quota are not mutually exchangeable (neither sold or leased) between fishing vessels, which is a handicap for flexible deployment of fishing vessels. The reason for this is the governments choice to give priority to regional employment instead of fishing efficiency. This inventory study shows that in the Dutch situation it seems most profitable for vessel owners to focus on private and public marine research and nearshore activities. The increasingly intensive use of the North Sea by an increasing number of stakeholders creates an increasing demand for marine research. In general, marine research activities yield a lower return than offshore activities for the oil and gas sector, but the marine research market is growing rapidly, is broad and poses lower requirements on vessel and crew. Secondly, many marine research projects have a link to and can be easily fitted into fishery activities. Moreover such activities may add to the fisherman’s understanding of the fishing grounds, which might benefit him in the long term. Although the gas, oil and green energy sector (windmills) will yield a higher return, it poses significantly higher demands on ship and crew. Previous inventories have shown that Dutch fishermen are momentarily still reluctant to add subsidiary activities to their daily fishing operations. However, creating value from selling nautic and marine ecosystem knowledge and services is a new mindset that can be applied rather broadly. It would pay off to prepare business plans for different market segments within a pool of vessel owners and to study requirements of these new markets. Subsequently, potential customers should be actively approached from the pool. A number of potential income sources will only be available if the government changes its policies, in particular financial compensation for collecting marine litter, a wide range of at-sea inspections, at-sea crisis management and the use of commercial data for government surveys such as fish stock assessments. Currently, preference is given to governmental vessels for at-sea inspections and fish stock surveys. Pagina 43
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