Fisheries Transmission Notice: Reading Precise Deadlines
The following is an extract from an internal notice circulated by the (fictional) European Coastal Monitoring Office. Read it and answer the questions.
From 1 March, vessels over 18 metres must transmit position data every 10 minutes, replacing the previous 30-minute interval. Vessels between 12 and 18 metres have until 1 September to comply; those under 12 metres are exempt until a review in 2026. Operators who fail to transmit for more than four consecutive hours must file a written explanation within 48 hours. In February, trials on 37 vessels showed transmission gaps averaging 2.1 hours, with 6 vessels accounting for 71% of all gaps. The notice states that the 10-minute rule applies 'irrespective of weather conditions', although the annex allows a 24-hour grace period after a documented satellite outage.
1. On 15 March, what transmission interval does the notice require of a 15-metre vessel? State your reasoning and flag any point the text leaves unresolved.
Read the worked answer
The notice does not specify an interval for that vessel on that date.
Reasoning:
- The 10-minute rule is stated for vessels over 18 metres from 1 March.
- A 15-metre vessel falls in the 12–18 metre band, which has 'until 1 September to comply' - so on 15 March it is not yet bound by the 10-minute rule.
- The text does not say what applies to that band in the interim. It says 10 minutes 'replaces the previous 30-minute interval', but only in the sentence about vessels over 18 metres.
Therefore any option asserting 'every 10 minutes' or 'every 30 minutes' for 15 March adds information the notice does not supply. The defensible answer is that the requirement cannot be determined from the extract. The trap is importing the old 30-minute rule for a class the text never assigns it to.
2. Which conclusion about the February trial is supported by the notice? (a) Most vessels were non-compliant; (b) transmission gaps were concentrated in a small number of vessels; (c) the six worst vessels had faulty equipment; (d) every vessel had a gap of at least 2.1 hours.
Read the worked answer
Answer: (b).
- (b) follows directly: 6 of 37 vessels produced 71% of all gaps, which is concentration by any reading.
- (a) is unsupported: the trial predates the 10-minute obligation, and a gap is not defined as a breach anywhere in the text.
- (c) is unsupported: the notice gives no cause for the gaps; equipment failure is an inference the text does not license.
- (d) misreads an average: 'gaps averaging 2.1 hours' describes the mean across vessels, not a floor for each one. Averages never establish that every case meets the average.
Method: separate what is stated (counts, shares, averages) from what would explain it (fault, non-compliance). Only the former is available.
3. A manager concludes: 'Since the rule applies irrespective of weather, an operator cannot use a storm to avoid the 48-hour written explanation.' Is this consistent with the notice?
Read the worked answer
Partly, but it conflates two separate obligations.
- Transmission duty. The 10-minute rule applies 'irrespective of weather conditions'. So bad weather does not excuse a transmission gap; a gap remains a gap even in a storm.
- Explanation duty. This is triggered by any failure to transmit for more than four consecutive hours, and must be filed within 48 hours. Nothing in the notice makes weather an excuse for skipping the explanation. On this narrow point the manager is right.
- The actual exception. The annex grants a 24-hour grace period, but only after a documented satellite outage - not weather generally. A storm that does not disable the satellite link does not engage it.
So the conclusion happens to be correct for the explanation duty, but the stated reason is imprecise: the relevant carve-out is a documented outage, and the manager's phrasing implies weather is legally irrelevant when the annex makes a specific technical event relevant.