17 December 2012
It is slightly strange that the relationship between WFF and the fishing industry varies by season....
..In spring, summer and autumn the leading environmental NGO works closely with the fishing industry in a number of regional advisory councils towards shared objectives. WWF has, for example, played a significant and positive role in the development of RAC advice on cod recovery, CFP reform and the development of long term management plans. Although there can be differences in emphasis between the industry and WWF representatives, there is a large degree of mutual respect and many shared aims.
Then winter arrives. Invariably, the green NGOs adopt much more hard- line positions, slipping into adversarial mode and making simplistic and misleading assertions which are presented through a loud and aggressive media megaphone.
We suppose that it is the lure of the media spotlight during the run up to the Council of Ministers’ decisions on TACs and quotas in late December that accounts for this strange bi-polar organisational behaviour. This year the problem has been intensified by the CFP reform process and the current focus on the European Parliament.
Like winter vomiting sickness, the symptoms of WWF winter statements are now well known and are recurring. This year they have been repeated by WWF’s Director of WWF’s European Policy Office, Tony Long.
They include:
- Unrecognisable and over-generalised statistics concocted to suggest to the uninformed that European fisheries are still headed towards catastrophe
- No credit given to the significant turn-around in stock biomass, fishing mortality, or industry-led conservation initiatives
- Repetition of the assertion or implication that ministers are in thrall to an over-powerful fishing lobby which leads quota decisions which depart radically from scientific recommendations
- Distortion of logic and language: apparently, European fleets have not been providing food security for millions of people. Instead we are told that “EU fishing fleets have been plundering European waters for too long”
- Recovering stocks and stocks already fished at maximum sustainable yield are never taken as signs that in many fisheries we are getting things right. Instead we are told that “Positive trends in fish stocks recovering have been seen in recent years, however all too often they are an exception rather than a rule”
- Professed or real ignorance of the close working relationship between ICES and the fishing industry throughout the year
A Very Bad Example: Western Channel Sole
In the hunt for bad news and evidence of irresponsibility, WWF has alighted on, “One extraordinary example…. a deviation of 264% above scientific advice for Sole in 2008!”
This is a bad example to try to draw the conclusion that TACs are set irresponsibly.
In 2008, the Commission proposed and the Council accepted a one-off upward adjustment in TAC to align the Western Channel sole quota with the level of actual catches and in doing so, lifted the fishery out of the era of misreporting and on the road to sustainability and maximum sustainable yield, which it now currently enjoys. This was not an act of ministers’ irresponsibility but an enlightened and brave departure from the banal notion that cutting quotas automatically cuts fishing mortality. This year, under an effective long term management plan, the TAC for this sole stock is proposed to increase again by a further 15%. Somehow, in its press release, WWF managed to turn a major positive, an inspirational turning point, into a negative.
Management Responsibilities
Apart from their bogus statistics, what NGO assertions about ministers’ irresponsibility generally fail to grasp is that ICES advice is not the same as fisheries management decisions and nor should it be. Fisheries managers are obliged to take into account a range of factors that stock assessment scientists do not.
- So far, ICES advice has been provided for the most part on a single stock basis. Yet many of our mixed demersal fisheries catch several species at the same time. Balancing TACs for a number of stocks each with a different stock status will inevitably mean a departure from a narrow interpretation of the scientific recommendations. Fisheries managers have the responsibility to make that judgement.
- Managers (including in this term the Commission, Third Countries like Norway as well as the Council of Ministers) also have responsibilities to the fishermen and fishing communities to take account of the impact of their decisions. A staged approach to reducing fishing mortality may well mean that TACs are legitimately set within a precautionary approach but above the most severe scientific recommendations.
- There is a strong case across a number of fisheries for the kind of quota uplift seen in the Western Channel sole fishery, linked to a decisive regime shift in how the fisheries are managed. STECF is of the view that TAC reductions even when underpinned by effort control simply haven’t reduced fishing mortality in the West of Scotland or Irish Sea cod fisheries. Doubtless when this radical change of direction is eventually taken it will be reflected in a divergence from the TACs suggested by a narrow reading of the ICES catch options, providing more statistics for simplistic and naive criticisms.
- Discards: A sure recipe for increasing the discards, that WWF professes to abhor, would be to ignore discards when making judgements on TAC levels. The Council of Ministers December meeting is the end of an annual process but it does provide member states with the opportunity to present the most up –to-date information on trends and developments in specific fisheries in a way that the more cumbersome Data Framework Regulation cannot. Some of this information is about discard rates under different TAC scenarios. It is entirely appropriate that this information is taken into account in TAC decisions.
In a nutshell, managers have a responsibility to set TACs taking into account a range of factors that go beyond those taken into account in preparing scientific stock assessments.
A More Considered Media Approach?
It is unlikely that this chiding will have much impact on WWF, or any of the other NGOs which misunderstand or deliberately misinterpret the December process. The allure of a media cheap shot is likely to be just too tempting.
We do not say that the December process in anything like a fully rational way of arriving at TAC decisions. That is why we work to develop effective long-term management plans which could reduce the need for ad hoc annual decisions. Until we get to that stage, managers will have to work with science that is sometimes incomplete by making management judgements on the basis of the best available evidence. This difficult process is not helped by deliberately misleading noises off-stage.
If WWF wants to retain the respect that its foot soldiers, working in the RACs and in collaboration with the fishing industry have built up during the rest of the year, it should reconsider its approach to year- end publicity.