The first BALTFISH meeting to take place under the Estonian presidency took place in Tallinn yesterday. There was also a technical working group focused on implementation of the discard ban, which will most likely come into force in 2014 as well as discussions centred upon TACs and quotas for 2013 and the multispecies management plan for the Baltic.
At the Council meeting in June, a General Approach was agreed to by a majority of Member States which included a three step process to bring a discard ban into being, concluding in 2018. This agreement was however roundly criticised by NGOs and the Swedish and Dutch governments rejected it for being too unambitious. The mornings technical working group session sought to bring consensus on how the discard ban in the Baltic could be more far-reaching than that agreed to in Brussels. Implementing with shorter timeframes, including more species, exempting those with high survival rates and identifying choke species such as species caught as bycatch like plaice in the cod fishery and salmon in the pelagics for which some Member States have insufficient or no quotas for.
Representatives from Poland and Latvia were keen to emphasise the importance of selectivity. For them as well as NGOs the key goal should be to avoid unwanted bycatch, juveniles and thus discards. The Latvian delegation also argued for all catches to be landed, with provisions for mandatory releasing, rather than for the landing obligation to merely include regulated species. Several Member States also highlighted the necessity for sea trout to be included on the list of species due to its proximity to salmon.
During the discussion regarding the minimum landing size (MLS) or minimum conservation reference sizes on cod, two groups were clearly defined. Denmark, Latvia and Germany want to remove or lower the MLS and Sweden, Finland, Poland together with NGOs and a unanimous BSRAC support keeping the MLS at 38 cm. In his concluding remarks the Danish representative leading the discard discussion, sought to explore at future meetings a Baltic-wide agreement for a two step discard ban; in 2014 for pelagics, salmon and industrial fish, with all other EU regulated species such as cod, flatfish and sea trout to be in place for the start of 2015. No reference was made to non fish species or mammals.
Regarding TACs and quotas for 2013, which will be finalised at the October Council, Member States limited themselves to preliminary reactions to the recommendations provided by ICES, STECF and the Commission. They were though broadly in favour of the proposals and sought to follow scientific advice for all stocks to reach their MSY levels. Discussions will also take place on whether or not to continue following the management plan for western Baltic cod. In the plan, the fishing mortality target is set at 0.6, which is far in excess of that needed to bring the stock to its MSY. The Danish delegation and NGOs both recommended lowering this, with ICES evaluating Fmsy to be 0.25, STECF estimate 0.33 and Dr.Rainer Froese has suggested a value of F=0.2.
On the multispecies management plan for the Baltic, Stuart Reeves from the Commission presented a preliminary “state of play with the Management plan for Baltic stocks of cod, herring and sprat”. DG Mare is currently working on a proposal for a long-term management plan which will cover the three main species. The main discussions concerned the target fishing mortality to be used in the model, what stocks to include in the plan and what TAC constraints to include in the plan. The Commission presented a paper that used the same F values as those currently used in the single-species model, except for Gulf of Riga herring, and the paper also gave several options on what to include or not. A majority of the meeting favoured to keep a TAC constraint of +-15% and to keep the plan focused on the eastern Baltic fish stocks. NGOs underlined that several scientific models implicate lower F values than in a single species management and referred to Pikitch et al. (2004) that states that modelling for ecosystem-based multispecies management at MSY levels, Fmsy needs to be lower than for single species.
The proposals are still in their infancy and there was agreement that the scientific basis for the model is not where it needs to be in order for it to be used as a basis on which to managed stocks and set quotas. An increase in the EMFF funding allocation for data collection could help to redress this balance.