Baltic quotas for 2017, closures for the Baltic cod fisheries, and EU technical measures filled the agenda during the first BALTFISH forum under the German Presidency.
The August 31 meeting in Frankfurt was well attended. This forum featured some new faces to the regular attendees from Baltic Member States and the Baltic Sea Advisory Council (BSAC), most notably some fishermen involved with Low Impact Fishers of Europe (LIFE) and LIFE’s new Baltic coordinator, the past BALTFISH President Marcin Rucinski.
With wide stakeholder consensus on most pelagic and flatfish quotas, the focus of the quota discussions were on the tragic situation facing the Western Baltic cod fisheries. Stakeholder views from BSAC remain unchanged as presented in the BSAC advice for 2017 quotas. However, LIFE published an Action Plan in July in response to the management crisis, including an assortment of options in place of a straight quota proposal. LIFE presented this plan near the end of the BALTFISH forum, to which we at FishSec voiced general agreement and support.
This Action Plan is currently the only proposal from any stakeholder group that has cross-sectoral support. It is also complementary to our position, expressed in the BSAC advice as a minority position for western Baltic cod.
So far, despite the rhetoric, no other organisation has articulated real options for the fishery other than a quota figure, except for some NGOs in the BSAC advice who support temporary emergency funding (EMFF 508/2014) and preferential allocation of quota (CFP 1380/2013, Article 17) to those fishers most vulnerable to quota reductions, particularly inshore, low impact fishers.
Also discussed was the summer closure for cod. This provision has been removed since the adoption of the new Baltic Multiannual Plan. BALTFISH proposed that it be reintroduced to maintain consistency with previous management, but received a number of compelling arguments against. ICES Chair Eskild Kierkegaard, who presented the scientific advice underpinning the Commission’s quota proposals, reminded the meeting about a 2007 STECF report concerning closed areas
“STECF notes that providing that the stocks concerned are exploited sustainable and that fisheries managers are confident that fishing mortality on the stocks can be effectively controlled by other measures than closed areas, the use of closed areas as a tool to regulate fishing mortality at the stock level might be unnecessary. However, closed areas may be an efficient management tools to achieve objectives other that regulating fishing mortality at stock level.” (Evaluation of Closed Area Schemes, SGMOS-07-03, p. 16)