News
October 20, 2009
CONTROL PROPOSAL FINALLY ADOPTED
After ”20 or 21” tri-lateral negotiations, EU fisheries ministers finally agreed on a new Control system in the early Tuesday morning hours, including a penalty point system that may result in revoked fishing licenses and widened possibilities for the Commission to punish financially overfishing member states. The Council also agreed on a high-grading ban for … Continued
October 16, 2009
No time to waste with IUU
Many loose-ends still to be tied up, FISH Staffer Christian Tsangarides reports from Chatham House conference in London on illegal-unreported-unregulated fishing. “The 5th International Forum on Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) Fishing, hosted by Chatham House in London, has seen much discussion of the new EU rules governing the regulation of IUU fishing that will … Continued
October 16, 2009
Fishermen “culture” should be considered more, US Professor says
Theories on the use of fisheries resources that bordered to those that won this year’s Nobel Prize for Economics were vented at a recent Stockholm seminar. Professor Kenneth Frank of Michigan State University, based on his research, urged decision makers, community leaders, and fishery managers to take into account the whole scope of the fishery … Continued
October 15, 2009
Control Proposal still hot potato to EU Ministers
The Control Regulation, still subject to last-minute revisions, and the 2010 Baltic catch quotas will top the Fisheries agenda as EU ministers gather for their October 19-20 Council meeting in Luxembourg. For the first time the ministers, and their advisors, carry with them background documents provided in a new project recently launched by FISH and … Continued
October 15, 2009
Fisheries contributed to 2009 Nobel Prize
The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for 2009 was shared by two American political scientists, rather than economists, one of whom was not only the first woman winner in the 41-year history of that Nobel Prize family “step-brother”, but also a student of fishing communities. Professor Elinor Ostrom of Indiana University, who shared the … Continued
October 14, 2009
Baltic Sea Strategy may mark start of EU regionalisation
Sweden has been named responsible for coordinating fisheries after the new EU Baltic Strategy is expected to be formally endorsed later in October. The Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region (SBSR) most likely signifies the beginning of stronger regionalisation within the European Union, key fisheries issues such as fleet capacity, discards and illegal catches being … Continued
October 14, 2009
“Blue Book” takes wide approach, strong grip, on global fisheries
Free to download from the Internet, a new 478-page book on “Fisheries, sustainability and development” is recommended by a Swedish professor as both “encyclopaedia and student literature”. Thirty-two articles by 52 experts, scientific in scope but popular in style, cover both socioeconomical and ecological aspects of fisheries, as well as aquaculture. The project, chiefly financed by … Continued
October 2, 2009
Ministers, Commissioner set sight on discard ban
In a joint declaration in Stockholm, eight Baltic Sea fisheries ministers and Commissioner Joe Borg have announced plans to develop a road map for a ban on discards. The road map, to be worked out in 2010, would aim at banning discards in the Baltic cod fishery, a measure that has been in force for … Continued
October 2, 2009
EP Fisheries Committee reacts to Guinea violence
Reacting to renewed violence in the African state of Guinea, the EU Parliament Fisheries Committee has rejected a draft fisheries agreement between the Union and Guinea. The agreement would had provided €450,000 a year in EU funding to develop Guinea’s fisheries sector, and meanwhile allow EU boats to fish in Guinean waters. The vote took … Continued
October 1, 2009
Transparency made opaque
An EU initiative to create more transparency in the handing out of fisheries subsidies has rather resulted in more obscurity, a new report says. The report for FishSubsidy.org, a British NGO dedicated to obtaining and publishing data on EU funding, was authored by investigative journalist Brigitte Alfter, a co-founder of FishSubsidy.org. Headlined “Slipping through the net: … Continued