Welcoming the EU Commission’s ”clear commitment” to bring in the MSY approach by 2015, a statement from nine important NGOs points out that Maxim Sustainable Yield is not “the ultimate target”.
The statement, signers including FISH, WWF and the OCEAN2012 coalition, was commenting on the Commission Communication two weeks earlier on principles for setting quotas for 2011.
Initially, the NGO document welcomes the “clear commitment to setting sustainable fishing opportunities in line with scientific advice and the precautionary approach, as well as full implementation of long-term management plans”.
As for the MSY approach, the statement emphasises that this is only an “intermediate target” for stocks that are overfished, rather to be seen as an “upper limit”.
“The focus on MSY indicates a continuing preoccupation with stock management diverting attention from efforts to establish integrated, multi-species, ecosystem-based fisheries management”, it adds.
The NGOs welcome the news that the portion of stocks assessed as overfished is decreasing in EU waters, but point a finger to the fact that, for example, 72 percent of the stocks in the North-East Atlantic and adjacent waters are overfished, far above the global average of 28 percent, and that the number of stocks which have no advice at all due to deficient data has increased substantially. The latter is especially true for the Mediterranean, where a majority of the stocks lack scientific advice.
The statements were signed by Birdlife International, Deep Sea Conservation Coalition, Ecologistas en Acción, The Fisheries Secretariat, Greenpeace, The Pew Environment Group, Seas At Risk, World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and OCEAN2012.
The OCEAN2012 coalition, formed in June last year with FISH as one of its five founding members, has now reached 70 members.