Scientific advice and ministers’ responsibility to manage fisheries

Taking
a broad view, if it is true that the Commission and the Council of Ministers
routinely set quotas that are unsustainable, it is a little difficult to
explain how our fisheries are doing so well. At the annual State of the Stocks meeting, in Brussels, the Chairman of the ICES
Advisory Committee, provided the definitive overview:

“Over
the last ten to fifteen years, we have seen a general decline in fishing
mortality in the Northeast Atlantic* and the Baltic Sea. The stocks have
reacted positively to the reduced exploitation and we’re observing growing
trends in stock sizes for most of the commercially important stocks. For the
majority of stocks, it has been observed that fishing mortality has decreased
to a level consistent with Maximum Sustainable Yield (MSY) – meaning levels
that are not only sustainable but will
also deliver high long term yields.” (Our emphasis)

Eskild Kirkegaard,
Chair of the Advisory Committee,
International Council for
Exploration of the Seas

This is an exceptionally important
statement, not just because it was made by the authoritative international body
with responsibility for assessing our fish stocks, but because it signals quite
unambiguously that, as an industry, we are already on track to deliver high
sustainable yields (maximum sustainable yield, in the jargon). There are of
course individual stocks that buck these general trends and it is important to
address the reasons for this. But there is no mistaking the signal coming from
the scientific advice: after many years of difficulties and sacrifice, we are
harvesting our stocks at a sustainable level that will deliver high quality
food to the table in the long term. That is really something to celebrate.

Ministers’ Responsibilities

But turning to why quotas
are sometimes set by ministers at levels different from the scientific
recommendations: Is this irresponsibility, or are there justifiable reasons for
this departure?

Essentially there are three
main reasons why the quotas adopted might not align with the scientific advice:

The first relates to the
fact that the scientific advice is for the most part provided on a single
species basis. However, many species are caught in mixed fisheries which capture a range of species in the same gear.
Cod, haddock and whiting for example are often caught together, although the
ratios between the species can vary considerably from trip to trip, and even
haul to haul. This means that a judgement must be made by fisheries managers on where to set the individual species quotas to
secure the optimum outcome across all of the species caught. Sometimes this
will mean setting an individual quota higher than would be the case on a single
species basis; but the converse can be true: where individual quotas are set
quotas are set lower than the single stock advice in order to reduce pressure
on another species in the group.

Another reason why
ministers might wish to set quotas higher than the single stock advice is for
socio-economic reasons. Often this is related to timing. Rebuilding a biomass
over two years rather than one year can make a huge difference for the
livelihoods of the fishermen dependent on that stock but will mean that the
same result is achieved over a slightly longer timeframe. Eastern Channel sole
is a good example of this at the moment. ICES are obliged to provide their
quota advice in relation to achieving maximum sustainable yield within the
following year. The choice for managers therefore is a drastic reduction in
quota in one year, or a more modest reduction spread over a slightly longer
period. The scientific projections suggest that both options will deliver the
biomass to maximum sustainable yield within the legally set timeframe (2020);
but the mix of small-scale fleets and larger vessels dependent on this stock
are more likely to maintain their viability under the second option. So
ministers might decide to depart from the short-term advice secure in the
knowledge that over the slightly longer term, the biomass targets will be
reached.

Finally, given the public
focus on discards in recent years, it is not unnatural that ministers will want
to take into account when setting quotas whether their decisions will increase
or reduce discards. The quota for North Sea cod has been set towards the upper
end of the scientific catch options in recent years exactly in order to avoid
wasting the resource by generating discards in mixed fisheries. The biomass has
continued to build steadily.

All of this means that
although quotas are fundamentally set in relation to the individual stock
scientific advice, fisheries managers (in this case the Commission, the Council
of Ministers and where relevant Norway) have a management responsibility
that is broader than blindly following the unrefined scientific
recommendations. In this ministers are acting to meet the legal requirements of
the reformed Common Fisheries Policy:“The CFP
shall ensure that fishing and aquaculture activities are environmentally
sustainable in the long-term and are managed in a way that is consistent with
the objectives of achieving economic, social and employment benefits, and of
contributing to the availability of food supplies. “ Article 2:1 of the CFP
Basic Regulation EU/1380/13

The challenge of managing mixed fisheries

There is no doubt that
managing fisheries which exploit more than a single species presents a range of
extra challenges. In any given year the abundance of individual species within
a mixed fishery assemblage might be going in divergent directions. It is also
true that management decisions on quotas are also going to be more demanding in
future. Fisheries managers will be
legally required both to set quotas consistent with achieving maximum
sustainable yield, and at the same time facilitate the progressive introduction
of a landings obligation. Finding some way to bring coherence to setting
individual quotas in a mixed fishery under these conditions is not for the
faint hearted.

ICES has developed the
concept of fishing mortality ranges
to address this situation. Maximum sustainable yield is not necessarily best
understood as a single point at the
peak of the yield curve but an area at
the top of the curve. Interpreting MSY in this way provides fisheries managers
with a degree of flexibility to balance the quotas set for individual species
caught within a mixed fishery. Coherence between TACs will be particularly
important in the context of the landings obligation because vessels will no
longer be permitted to discard a species for which the quota is exhausted.

F ranges are likely to be an important tool in the future
but it is highly unlikely that they will on their own be able to completely
resolve the problem of chokes under the landings obligation. Some NGOs have
advocated the lowest common denominator solution: They argue that fishing
should stop when the first quota in a mixed fishery is exhausted. Given that in
many mixed fisheries there are many small bycatch quotas in place that could
prevent fishing vessels, nations or the whole EU, from catching its main
economic quotas, this would represent the Armageddon option. It would also be
contrary to Article 2 of the CFP Regulation, as discussed above.

It is clear that if we want socially and economically, as well as an
environmentally, sustainable fisheries, something is going to have to give. One
idea would be to group minor species under a single quota heading, such as is
already done in the Norwegian sector under ‘Norway others’. Care would have to
be taken to prevent unacceptable over-exploitation of any individual species
within the group and careful monitoring would be required. But this would be a
way of avoiding chokes whilst still managing the exploitation rate of the
stocks concerned. Another, more radical, suggestion would be to remove TAC
status from a number of stocks that are not targeted as such but taken as
bycatch. Again, monitoring the conservation status of these stocks and putting
in place additional measures where
necessary would be a necessary corollary of removing TAC status.

Finally, as fishing
pressure has been progressively reduced, interspecies predation has increased
in overall significance and will increasingly have to be taken into account in
the future. In the North Sea this kind of natural mortality is already more significant
that fishing mortality.

All this highlights some of
the issues currently being debated on how to best manage mixed fisheries in the
future. None of
this is easy. There is no silver bullet that removes the complexity inherent in
managing mixed fisheries. We have some of the most complex fisheries in the
world: multi-species, multi-gear and multi-jurisdiction.

NGO agenda

The task, however, is being made more
difficult by a top-down agenda pursued by the NGO community. A steady
determination to use Europe’s co-decision process to impose a rigid legal
framework on the management of mixed fisheries has become evident. This is
currently generating a great deal of heat in relation to the Baltic
multi-annual management plan. This is important to us because the Baltic plan
will be followed shortly after by proposals for North Sea and Western Waters
mixed fishery plans. The NGOs want:

• To
  make biomass targets mandatory. However the CFP already requires the exploitation rate to be set at a level
  that provides a good probability that a low fishing mortality rate will deliver
  high biomass. The concept of biomass MSY is regarded as scientific illiteracy
  by mainstream fisheries scientists because there are so many other factors at
  work in the marine environment that it is not possible to guarantee that
  biomass targets would be achieved, even if fishing was reduced to zero
• To
  oblige ministers to use the lowest common denominator in setting TACs (in other
  words under-exploiting the main economic species in order to reduce
  exploitation on a minor bycatch species). If taken literally and put into
  practice this would have catastrophic social and economic consequences for
  fleets and ports. It would also be contrary to Article 2 of the CFP basic
  Regulation which explicitly requires the Commission and ministers to secure
  employment, economic and social benefits of sustainable exploitation of fish
  stocks.
• To
  remove some of the flexibility in setting quotas in relation to F ranges
  suggested by ICES: This would of course undermine the point of using ranges in
  the first place
• More
  broadly, to constrain the jurisdiction of ministers to set TACs at an
  appropriate level taking all the factors mentioned above into account. (this
  issue has been referred to the European Court which will be asked to interpret
  the meaning of the Lisbon Treaty on this issue)

Essentially these tactics, if
successful, would reduce the scope for the kind of adaptive, pragmatic but
scientifically informed, management of mixed fisheries that is required and replace
it by an inflexible legal framework. This is all very unhelpful and dangerous
not least because of the influence the NGOs have within the European
Parliament.

Weird timing

It is more than a little bizarre that
this battle has emerged now, at a time after all the hard work has been done
and 80% (by tonnage) of our stocks are already at MSY. Leaving aside the
ongoing dispute over who has jurisdiction to set quotas, the debate about MSY
is now focused on how to harvest the 5% or 10% at the top of the yield curve.
This happy situation contrasts with the extreme rhetoric being used in the
debate that would suggest that what is at stake is nothing less than the
exposure of European fisheries to crass over-exploitation, stock depletion and
potential collapse. But as we have seen
above no less an authority than ICES has already explained that because of the
measures already taken, we have already travelled the journey, not just to
sustainable fishing, but to a position where we can deliver high long-term
yields.

Just why the NGOs and their allies in
the European Parliament have chosen to take this adversarial and legalistic
approach, rather than celebrate the progress we have made, is another question
which we will analyse elsewhere; but in an already complex area their public
position is, to say the least, unhelpful.

*Includes
the North Sea