The EU Commission’s proposal for deep-sea TACs for 2011-2012 contained no raises, but environmentalists immediately condemned it for being far from enough.
A press release from the Commission said that “no increases” in Total Allowable Catches (TACs) had been “granted” in EU waters and the North-East Atlantic “until positive trends in the abundance of deep-sea stocks have been properly identified”, while some important TACs, questioned by both scientists and environmentalists, will indeed be kept the same as in 2010.
“Since deep-sea species in general live long and are only able to reproduce after many years, they are particularly vulnerable to fishing activity. Wherever we are uncertain about stock status, we need to ensure, at the very least, that we don’t fish more than we do today until we have better knowledge of the real biological conditions”, Fisheries Commissioner Maria Damanaki said.
The press release added that no TACs had been reduced by more than 15 percent, “where necessary applied over the two-year period”.
The Commission noted that deep-sea bottom trawling still raises “concern” as for its negative impact on the ecosystem, and that the fishing sector needs to be “more involved” in efforts to reduce these impacts. The Commission specifically mentioned limited fishing effort and better gear.
The proposal was still condemned by the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition (DSCC), an international alliance of more than 60 organizations, who said that the allowances for deep-sea bottom fishing “will lead to continued depletion and destruction of Northeast Atlantic fish stocks”, adding that the practice “should be abandoned”.
“Today’s action flies in the face of the European Union’s commitment to the United Nations to protect deep-sea life from overfishing,” said Matthew Gianni, political and policy advisor for the DSCC. “It is clear the Commission wants to maintain the stability of the deep-sea fishing industry at the expense of the integrity of fish stocks and other vulnerable deep-sea species”.
He underlined that all these species are outside safe biological limits, according to the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES), the Commission’s most common independent scientific advisors. The DSCC has repeatedly called on the Commission to recommend a temporary moratorium on deep-sea bottom fishing in the North Atlantic, until scientists have sufficient understanding of the biology of deep-sea fish stocks and ecosystems to determine what constitutes sustainable levels of fishing.
The final decision on the 2011-2012 catch quotas will be made by the EU Fisheries ministers at their 13-14 December Council meeting.