The Council of Fisheries Ministers reached an agreement of fishing opportunities for deep sea stocks from. Although catches will be reduced for a number of deep sea stocks, the Council have chosen to not follow scientific advice by setting catch limits higher for 63% of the stocks.
The agreement made yesterday covers fishing opportunities for deep-sea fish stocks in EU and international waters in the North-East Atlantic for 2015-2016. Early October the Council put forward a proposal for TACs for deep sea stocks, which was largely in line with scientific advice but failed to to follow scientific advice to reduce TACs for the key stocks: roundnose grenadier and red seabream
The International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES), called for significant reductions as well as fisheries closures for several stocks of roundnose grenadier and red seabream. The Commission in its advice instead proposes to reduce catches by 20% per year. The Council have now agreed to make even linear reductions in TACs for these stocks, which will put these stocks at serious risk of depletion.
The Council furthermore agreed to set higher TACs than proposed both by ICES and the Commission for black scabbardfish. . Thus, the Fisheries Ministers failed to follow the recently reformed Common Fisheries Policy, as a fundamental element of the CFP is to end overfishing by 2015 where possibly and by 2020 at the latest. The Council did however agree to maintain the prohibition on retention of depleted orange roughy and deep-sea sharks.