These are challenging times for the European fleet: Depleted stocks, increased regulation, and declining profits mean that management faces tough decisions, and overcapacity cannot be ignored. Those were the main points made at a recent Brussels conference on sustainable fisheries.
The Brussels-based Seas At Risk organisation hosted this annual conference, scheduled to discuss the issues of CFP reform and restructuring the European fishing fleet to deal with problems of overcapacity.
Axel Wenblad, Director General of the Swedish Board of Fisheries, presented his thoughts on future control regulations being better for implementing European policy. His goals were to gather the fishing rules into fewer regulations and for long-term plans to be stuck to. Wenblad also supported measures to devolve decision-making on fisheries regulations to a regional level. He argued that when the twenty-seven fisheries ministers meet for discussions, debates over niche issues such as mesh sizes should be far from the agenda, and he suggested that “maybe RACs should decide this for their region.”
At times the speakers painted a pessimistic scene; however Sidney Holt, who proved a lively contributor to discussions throughout the conference, provided a different view when he discussed the example set by the International Whaling Commission, and the stock recovery that was generated by their management policies. Holt, who is an advisor to the Ocean 2012 coalition. argued that the Commission’s energy would be put to better use by managing inputs such as fishing capacity and effort rather than trying to regulate output through TAC quotas and regulating discard rates.
The wide range of speakers at the conference added a level of diversity to the debate. Dale Squires of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the USA provided an outsider’s perspective on European issues, and he neatly surmised the problems Europe faces in dealing with its capacity issues. He said with regard to dealing with overcapacity: “in Europe you know what the problems are, you have a good idea of your solutions, but in the end you have political problems.”
In the end, Europe collectively has not decided what type of fleet it will have in the future, so decisions on changing the capacity today do not always produce an endgame, but we can be certain that the debate will endure.
Christian Tsangarides