Cod review will be be major challenge
Cod is the big issue facing the Common Fisheries Policy this year and the NFFO will be working hard to use this opportunity to bring commonsense into the cod recovery plan.
As part of this process, the NFFO recently met with Defra and the Northern Irish and Scottish fisheries administrations to discuss the UK position for the cod review. The talks were very productive and there was consensus on a number of key issues.
This included agreement on the need to move away from the ‘short, sharp shock’ approach to stock management with there being new cuts imposed each year. Rather than setting unachievable targets it would be much better to have a policy that gave due recognition when stock recovery was heading in the right direction. In other words, for any policy to work there needs to be stability.
Even more crucially, the meeting agreed that for any fisheries management regime to be successful, fishermen needed to believe it would work.
The forthcoming Cod Symposium on 9-10 March in Edinburgh is jointly organised by the North Sea and North Western Waters RACs, and promises to be a far reaching event that will input stakeholder views into the review.
The event will combine current scientific, socio-economic and fisheries stakeholder knowledge and expertise of the cod fisheries in the North Sea and North Western Waters in order to consider whether and how the cod stocks in these areas may be recovered.
The outputs from the symposium will be used by the North Sea and North Western Waters RACs in producing advice for the Commission and Member States on cod recovery in the areas they cover.
An important aspect of the event is to combine stakeholder knowledge with that of other experts and at least half of the agenda is devoted to group discussion in workshops where this can take place. |
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