EU ministers to allow more fish to be caught next year

Ignoring the advice of their own scientific consultants, European Union fisheries ministers voted Wednesday to allow European fishermen to catch more fish next year. Experts said the decision would threaten already endangered species.

The EU has long imposed quotas on fishermen to protect seriously depleted stocks in continental waters.

Yearly quotas are set by the European Commission, the EU's executive arm, after consulting scientific experts from the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea, based in Copenhagen, about the health of specific fish stocks.

In Brussels, the council's advice is mixed with heavy doses of politics and business from Europe's fishing nations and its powerful seafood industry. Negotiations, which started on Monday, continued through the night on Tuesday. The 2008 quotas were released Wednesday morning.
This year, business pressures seemed to triumph, environmental groups said. "We were very disappointed - this is essentially an industry proposal," said Carol Phua, who studies the issue in Brussels for the WWF, the World Wide Fund for Nature.

Most significant, the ministers agreed to allow an 11 percent rise in the catch of North Sea cod. The sea council had recommended a reduction of 50 percent in the total removal of cod from the area, a figure that includes both legal and illegal fishing as well as natural death of the fish. The scientists also called for a reduction in the quota of haddock fished. The ministers instead allowed it to rise 5 percent.

"We have given scientific advice to our clients, in this case the EU, but the commission makes the treaty," said Martin Pastoors, chairman of ICES's Advisory Committee on Fishery Management. But he said the large disparities between the scientists' advice and the EU allowances this year were "highly unusual."

"When we recommend changes the numbers aren't always the same, but the changes are at least usually in the same direction," Pastoors said.

In some cases the commission did propose hefty cuts in fishing, although generally less than the scientists recommended. The herring quota decreased by 41 percent; ICES had suggested a 50 percent reduction.

Europe's fishing industry has fallen on hard times in the last decade because of declining fish stocks, quotas and higher fuel prices.

This summer, Polish fisherman defiantly refused to honor EU quotas for cod in the Eastern Baltic, fishing anyway. Their politicians supported them. Grzegorz Halubek, the deputy head of the Polish Fisheries Ministry, said that fisherman would not be fined or punished for ignoring the ban.

Andrzej Gosciniak, president of the Polish fishing association, said, "The fishermen are breaching the ban because they have no choice." He added, according to the PAP news agency, "They have to earn a living."

But while Pastoors said he understood the pressure, he added that the EU's decision to ignore scientific advice and to allow more fishing would have serious consequences for cod in particular. "If there is going to be recovery it will be much slower," he said.

The catch for fishermen in the North Sea has collapsed to about 20,000 tons from some 170,000 tons two decades ago. Seventy percent of fish eaten in countries like Britain is cod, the central ingredient of classic fish and chips.

The EU argued that the impact of increased allowances for some species in 2008 could be offset by restriction on how many days fisherman could be at sea, as well as voluntarily improvements in ecologically sound fishing practices that are encouraged under the new agreement.

Large fishing boats that trawl the sea often pick up juvenile fish that are too small to sell or that are from species that are "over quota," a phenomenon known as by-catch. While such fish are generally thrown back, they are often dead by the time they are removed from the nets and returned to the sea, with a devastating impact on the species. Under the new agreement, if boats agree to have observers on board and to use equipment that reduces by-catch, they are rewarded with more days at sea.

North Sea cod has recovered somewhat since 2000, scientists say, but remains well below levels required to insure the stock's survival. "We really need more compulsory measures that could help the cod recover," said Phua of WWF.

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IHT