The Commission published last week a highly critical review of deep-water fisheries management. Appropriate recommendations for actions are missing, as the review is only pointing out the need for improved monitoring, control and data collection. The review concludes that reductions of the current levels of exploitation are inevitable. A much needed step is restricting licenses to those deep-water fisheries that are shown to be sustainable.
Joe Borg, European Commissioner for Fisheries and Maritime Affairs, said: “Decisions to phase out some deep sea fisheries were taken at the November Council. Clearly, further action must be taken to ensure the effective protection of these fragile species. The Commission is fully committed to the task at hand and will continue its work with all the relevant Parties.”
The long-awaited review highlights many serious shortcomings in current management measures, and in their implementation. The main problem is that since the introduction of measures in 2002, Total Allowable Catches (TACs) and fishing capacity ceilings have been set too high to limit catches or constrain fishing effort. This is partly due to lack of basic knowledge of the biology of deep-water species and the fisheries concerned, and partly due to the unwillingness of Member States to curb fisheries which in many cases are seen as an alternative to declining continental-shelf fisheries.
The review indicates that TACs are not an adequate management tool for deep-water fisheries, which are mainly mixed fisheries, due to the lack of information on catch composition, discards and geographical distribution of the stocks.
Poor implementation of the weak measures further reduced the chances of protecting deep-water stocks. Member States did poorly in control and enforcement and in the data collection scheme.
The review calls for better information on distinct fisheries, more rigorous monitoring and control, and a greater emphasis on collecting data to assess the ecosystem impact of deep-water fisheries. While these are all prerequisites for a targeted and effective management of deep-water fisheries, it is clear that this will take time. In the short-term strong measures are needed to avoid depletion of stocks. Deep-water species are highly vulnerable to over-fishing and will not rebuild within a few years or even decades. The review itself states that “full compliance with the precautionary approach would have required the setting of much lower TACs and effort limits, or even the closure of the fisheries”. It also states that “many deep-sea stocks have such low productivity that sustainable levels of exploitation are probably too low to support an economically viable fishery”. The only effective short-term measure is therefore a suspension of deep-water fisheries, licensing only those deep-water fisheries that are shown to be sustainable.