Had fisheries management been sustainable, EU catches could have been 80 percent higher, scientists behind a new study say.
Meanwhile, the study points out that maintaining or restoring fish stocks at levels that are capable of producing maximum sustainable yield is a legal obligation under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and has been given the deadline of no later than 2015 in the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation of 2002.
That deadline, the study finds, will not only be impossible to meet – it may be exceeded by decades. According to Rainer Froese, the leading scientist behind the report, “with a business-as-usual approach, rebuilding of European stocks will take more than 30 years”.
Even if fishing were halted this moment, 22 percent of the stocks are so depleted that it would be impossible for them to be rebuilt by 2015.
The scientists also note that this mismanagement is in breach of the legally binding commitment in the EU treaty to always apply the precautionary principle.
Furthermore, the study shows that this failure not only harms the environment, it is extremely bad for the economy of the sector. Current landings of the Northeast Atlanticfish stocks, examined in the study are 7.6 million tons compared to a possible catch of 13,6 million tons under a sustainable fisheries management.