The European Commission is expected to announce the closure of the North Sea sandeel fishery this month.
The Commission’s Scientific, Technical and Economic Committee for Fisheries recommended an immediate closure of the fishery for the rest of the year, to conserve depleted sandeel stocks. The Commission will for the first time either close or scale down the fishery every year, depending on need.
Surveys in April and May showed that North Sea sandeel numbers were just half of the 300,000 million fish required to allow fishing – a threshold set by the EC last December. The Danish industrial fleet catches more than 90 per cent of the total allowable catch (TAC) for sandeels, set at 660,960 tonnes in 2005. But with the current decline in sandeels, the fleet has only been catching a third of their allowable catch in the past two years.
North Sea warming is thought to be partly responsible for the decline in sandeels. Sea temperatures have risen by 1°C in the last 25 years, causing a major shift in the North Sea ecosystem and delaying the appearance of the plankton that young sandeels feed on.
Sandeels form a key component of the marine food web, providing food for seabirds, other fish such as cod and mackerel, and porpoises, among others. The sandeel shortage was thought to be a major factor in seabird breeding failures along the UK’s North Sea coast in 2004, which turned out to be the worst breeding season on record. Dr Euan Dunn, Head of Marine Policy at the UK’s Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), said the decision to close the fishery was “hugely welcome”, but feared it may be too late for seabirds breeding this year.
North Sea sandeels are currently managed as one stock, with a blanket TAC; whereas research has shown that it may be made up of different populations that should be managed separately. The RSPB has been pushing for more sensitive regulation of the fishery. While this could not tackle the effects of climate change, it would be “a wise precaution against the sandeel fishery turning the screw further on a fish stock in trouble”, said Dunn.