Earlier this week, the Baltic Sea Advisory Council met in Copenhagen to discuss – among other things – TACs and quotas for 2015 in light of the ICES advice, as well as future long-term multispecies management.
This spring, there was stark advice on Baltic Sea cod, with substantial reductions proposed by ICES for both stocks. This has, understandably, caused a lot of discussion within the Baltic Sea Advisory Council (BSAC), particularly in light of the fact that the cod stocks have both been under a multi-annual management plan since 2007 ((EC) No 1098/2007) and seemed to be recovering.
The situation for eastern Baltic cod is complex and not well understood. The recent deterioration is most likely not fisheries-induced, but caused by wider ecological and hydrological changes. A sharp decrease in quotas is perhaps therefore a particularly bitter pill to swallow.
With the western Baltic cod, the situation is different. It is well-known that the current management plan objective for the stock is not in line with the new MSY objective. The ICES advice is based on new guidance from the Commission (COM(2014)388) that MSY targets should take precedence.
In light of this, the sector interests and the environmental NGOs could not agree on a joint approach to setting fishing possibilities for either cod stock. On central Baltic herring (including Gulf of Riga) and plaice, all parties supported the ICES advice. Everyone also agreed that greater caution was called for regarding the increase in TAC for Bothnian Sea herring – due to large uncertainties in the assessment – and that a 15 per cent increase would be better both for the stock and the fishery.
On sprat, sector and environmental interests again agreed to disagree, with NGOs supporting the reduction proposed by ICES. Regarding salmon, the European Anglers Association and the environmental NGOs called for a greater reduction in the TAC, to 79,000 individuals in subdivisions 22–31 and 9,600 in subdivision 32, whereas the majority did not agree with the idea to reduce the TAC. There was a joint call for habitat restoration and removal of physical barriers in rivers to aid the recovery of wild salmon stocks.
Future multispecies management
With the resolution of the inter-institutional deadlock on multi-annual plans earlier this spring, work on developing a multispecies management plan for the Baltic has been resumed. Therefore, the BSAC also discussed a letter from DG MARE proposing an outline for the plan, and a response to the Commission’s questions. With the impending implementation of the landing obligation in the Baltic, it was emphasized that quality is more important than speed at this point. Further work by the BSAC on multispecies management will be undertaken later this year.