7 November 2023
Let’s get one thing straight from the outset. Decisions on how much fish should be taken out of the sea in any given year should be based on the very best available scientific advice.
Once this principle is established, however, things become complicated and there is an important and legitimate distinction to understand between scientific advice and subsequent management decisions. Scientific advice on next year’s quotas is based on recommendations produced to meet a particular agreed format, whilst fisheries managers have a wider set of responsibilities. It is important that this is understood.
Scientific Advice
Fisheries scientists working within the ICES* framework make recommendations on total allowable catches (TACs) according to a format laid down by the people commissioning the advice. (UK, EU, Norway etc)
In recent years, a key question for scientists to answer has been – what quantitative catch limit for any given stock would be consistent with achieving maximum sustainable yield in the year ahead? There are other possible options to focus the scientific recommendations, for example: what level of catch would be consistent with a precautionary approach? or what quota level will deliver the biggest increase in biomass left in the sea? All of these options are valid and they give fisheries managers (those countries or groups member states with a stake in each fishery) the possibility of choices when making those final decisions in the year end fisheries negotiations.
In most cases maximum sustainable yield has become the favoured option from this range of choices in most because it provides a handy rule of thumb for achieving long term sustainable exploitation. This is particularly straightforward in single species fisheries.
Things become more complex when managers have to make TAC decisions in mixed fisheries – where multiple species are caught together. Importantly, the scientific advice is provided by ICES on a single stock basis, although in recent years attempts have been made to quantify the impact of a TAC choice for one stock on the other stock in a mixed fishery. The degree of association of different species is a further complication to be mindful of.
Then there is the legal angle. EU legislation requires TACs to be set at single stock MSY level, with little scope for managers to take wider factors into account. The UK Fisheries Act provides explicit scope for managers to depart from single stock MSY in particular circumstances. Norway on the other hand generally adopts a pragmatic approach towards MSY depending on the factors in play in any given year.
Domestic legislation is one thing but as there are generally more than one country involved in TAC decisions that are usually made in a series of multilateral, trilateral and bilateral negotiations each autumn. The domestic legal constraints of each individual country cannot be binding on all parties – that way a perpetual logjam results. TACs are set through negotiation, using the best available science as the essential reference point – but not necessarily the single stock MSY number – other options might be more relevant depending on the circumstances.
Management Responsibilities/Trade offs between Different Objectives
Anyone with a sincere desire to manage our fisheries rationally, fairly and sustainably, will soon come to the realisation that TAC decisions are a series of trade-offs between different objectives. So, making progress towards MSY, or holding a stock in the region of MSY will be important. But minimising discards or reducing the scope for chokes will also be a valid aim in the negotiations (Chokes are where in the context of a requirement to land all quota species, the exhaustion of the quota for one species will trigger the closure of the fishery for multiple other stocks – up to 25 in some cases).
Managers might also consider that a multi-year strategy makes sense to build up a stock has slipped below safe limits, without causing undesirable consequences for fishing businesses and fishing communities.
A Norwegian scientist one said that fisheries management is not rocket science. It’s much more complicated than that. Some of the factors include:
- The quality of the assessment – periodically reviewed through a benchmarking process to establish whether the data, model and assumptions stand up to scrutiny
- The alignment of political boundaries with biological stock boundaries
- The option of supplementing TAC decisions with technical measures
- An ‘of which’ quotas (which subdivides a TAC area)
- What to do when the scientists conclude that a stock cannot be recovered to single stock MSY in a single year and therefore according to the advice format ICES is obliged to advise a zero TAC. ICES in recent years has also provide technical advice on levels of unavoidable bycatch, which is an important and helpful development for managers making difficult decisions.
- Securing optimum outcomes in mixed fishery configurations
Trends
It is important to appreciate that we have come a long way since the 1990s when many of our fisheries could justifiably be called basket cases. Right sizing the fleets during the late 1990s and several other important fisheries management measures have made a huge difference. The general situation now is that with a few outliers, stock trends broadly continue, year by year, to move in the right direction as they have for more than two decades now.
This is not the time for complacency but neither is it time to pay heed to the siren voices who routinely peddle a catastrophe narrative that suits their fund-raising purposes.
Legal Actions
Some environmental NGOs have threatened or initiated legal action in an attempt to force fisheries managers (the European Commission and Council and UK government) to set TACs at the single stock MSY level indicated in ICES advice. This is generally accompanied by an apocalyptic narrative predicting widespread and imminent collapse of fish stocks in European and UK waters. Apart from being at variance with the broad fishing pressure and biomass trends identified by ICES, if successful these legal maneuovers would remove all scope for nuance and scope for pragmatic fisheries management. The necessary trade-offs between rebuilding depleted stocks where this is necessary, minimising discards and chokes in mixed fisheries, adopting a multi-year staged rebuilding programme would become impossible, with serious socio-economic consequences. These aggressive but naive manoeuvres are unlikely to be successful because of explicit scope for departure from single stock MSY in both the CFP and UK Fisheries Act but this will not prevent the accompanying media hysteria, which can rattle ministers.
Dialogue and Real World Consequences
For many stocks, setting TACs each year will be a straightforward process of applying ICES single stock MSY advice. But many of our demersal stocks are caught within mixed fishery configurations and this is when trade-offs between different objectives are unavoidable.
Fisheries managers will be concerned above all with real world consequences of their decisions and these cannot be read off a spreadsheet but require a detailed understanding of the dynamic patterns in each fishery. Negotiators will therefore want to maintain a close dialogue with the fishing industry before and during the negotiations to test various options.
A consultative process has evolved in which industry representatives are involved throughout the year, in the quality of the scientific assessments and advice and how the emerging recommendations should be applied to secure the best outcomes.
Conclusion
Hopefully, this short article will have provided some insight into the complex process of setting TACs during each autumn’s negotiations. Much is at stake each year and scientists, fisheries managers, and industry representatives have important but distinct roles to play.
*International Council for Exploration of the Seas – the Copenhagen based multi-national coordinating body uses for scientific advice in the North East and North West Atlantic.