The EU Commission has adopted rules for the implementation of last year’s IUU regulation, but environmentalists voiced concern that some salmon stocks have been excluded. The Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) fishing regulation was adopted in September 2008, and will enter into force on Jan.1 next year. It will control all landings and transhipments of … Continued
Looking back at two years of Integrated Maritime Policy at work, the Commission reports that, out of 65 actions in the action Plan, 56 have been completed or launched. In a two-year progress report the Commission provides information and references for a total of 62 items related to the Integrated Maritime Policy (IMP), ranging from … Continued
Not surprisingly, a study of communications between stakeholders in the Baltic RAC found “distrust” and “different levels of communicative skills”, as well as “different understandings of scientific concepts and language”. The project,”Facilitating Governance of Baltic Seas Fisheries by Improving Communication Among Stakeholders”, is run by a group of researchers at the Gothenburg Center for Public … Continued
The main demand in a joint letter on harmful subsidies from three environment NGOs was included all but verbatim in the conclusions from the October Council meeting of the EU Environment ministers. The letter to the EU Environment attachés from the WWF, BirdLife International and OCEAN2012, a coalition promoting more sustainable fisheries in the Union … Continued
Sweden will introduce an ITQ system for pelagic fisheries on November 1, the Board of Fisheries has announced. The Individually Transferable Quotas (ITQ) rules will be applied for mackerel, herring, sprat, blue whiting, great sand eel, and some species in industrial fisheries. For the remainder of this year, the only change for fishermen with licenses … Continued
Two of the main industry organisations in EU fisheries have presented a positioning document on the Commission’s CFP reform Green Paper, calling it “provocative” although “interesting”, but “painting too bleak a picture of the situation, in a pessimistic or even alarmist manner”. Europêche, the umbrella organisation for EU fisheries enterprises, and COGECA, organising Europe’s fishing … Continued
These are challenging times for the European fleet: Depleted stocks, increased regulation, and declining profits mean that management faces tough decisions, and overcapacity cannot be ignored. Those were the main points made at a recent Brussels conference on sustainable fisheries. The Brussels-based Seas At Risk organisation hosted this annual conference, scheduled to discuss the issues … Continued
Sharks had already lived on this planet for 200 million years when dinosaurs appeared. And now, due to a heavy impact of human predation, sharks are slowly disappearing, the audience was told at a recent symposium in Stockholm. There are many misconceptions about sharks, the experts observed, but one aspect needs to be enforced: sharks … Continued
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
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