The Guardian recently published the footage of a vessel sighted while openly discarding more than 5,000 kg of cod and other dead white fish, or nearly 80% of its catch. Discarding of unwanted catch of is one of the most serious threats to sustainable management of fish stocks.
The incident was documented by the Norwegian Coastguard and has brought the EU quota system and discards under the spotlight once again. Discarding of fish does not only mean a massive waste of food and potential income, it also leads to unrecorded catches, resulting in incorrect fisheries statistics, which disrupt the basis for scientific assessments of stocks and advice on management.
Unfortunately the practice of discarding fish is common but has rarely been this well documented. Opinions are split on whether the vessel was discarding fish for which it had no quota, or if it was “high-grading” its catch by discarding low-value small fish in order to fill their quota with higher-value big fish. The British trawler had previously been inspected in Norwegian waters, where the fish was caught, and declared legal before crossing into the UK where it dumped the majority of its load overboard. The practice is illegal in Norwegian waters but legal in EU-waters, as the EU quotas only limit the amount of fish landed at ports, not what is actually caught at sea. Hence, there is no restriction on the amount of fish a vessel can catch.
The practice of discarding is widely recognized as unsustainable but inevitable, given the present EU quota system. The quotas are set at individual species level, which then are allocated and traded amongst individual fishermen. Often they will buy quotas out at sea once they know what they are catching. Since it is illegal to bring back to port fish they have no quotas for, these fish are discarded. It makes more economic sense to bring only the most saleable fish to the market, which means the lowest value catch gets discarded. This practice is depleting populations that are already overfished.
EU fisheries ministers set the quotas after carefully considering the sustainable levels proposed by ICES, the International Council for the Exploration of the Seas, the leading scientific body for fisheries research. ICES has repeatedly advised the EU that stocks of cod in the North Sea are much too low to be fished and has argued for no-go areas. However, the European government ministers often overlook their advice.
At present, the EU fishing policy is part of a regulatory regime that in some instances encourages discard of valuable resources. Last year the EU estimated that between 40% and 60% of all fish caught by trawlers in the North Sea was discarded. A review of fisheries management is needed, encouraging more sustainable fishing methods.