The Council has agreed TACs for deep sea stocks for the coming two years. While most quotas will be reduced next year, a lack of caution has been exercised for these vulnerable species. There was more good news for sharks though, for which no quotas were assigned.
Swedish minister Eskil Erlandsson criticised the agreement, stating “I am very disappointed the Fisheries Council didn’t show responsibility for management of the vulnerable deep sea stocks”.
Deep sea species tend to be slow growing, late maturing and have low reproductive capacity, which makes them particularly vulnerable to overfishing. This makes the serious lack of scientific information on the deep sea stocks in the Northeast Atlantic all the more problematic.
For stocks which are data poor, the guiding principle for EU fisheries management is the precautionary principle. However, for several stocks this was ignored by the Council. Over half of the agreed quotas were either in excess of the scientific recommendation or Commission proposal, and three stocks will have TACs more than 200% higher than that suggested by ICES.
Species for which the Commission proposed no fishing opportunities, orange roughy and seventeen shark species, the Council agreed to a zero TAC.
One of the central problems that the agreed quotas for the coming two years will cause is that many of the (bycatch) species that are caught in large quantities in mixed deep sea fisheries have no TAC. This leaves them unmanaged and unregulated. Unfortunately, the limited number of species managed by TACs has also led to misreporting of the species in the catches to avoid counting them against the quotas. An example of this is the roundnose grenadier TAC off the west coast of the UK, where the agreed 69% quota increase will cause problems due to high levels of bycatch.
After 2014, it is supposed that new legislation will be in place regarding deep sea fisheries. There is a Commission proposal for a revised access regime on the table, and if this becomes EU legislation 54 species will be covered by TACs rather than the present 24. Moreover, the proposed new legislation will seek to regulate deep-sea fisheries; including measures to phase out bottom trawling and bottom gillnet fishing for deep-sea species. The European Council and Parliament will be debating the Commission beginning in early next year.