PECH has voted in favour of two significant changes to the management plan, to allow gillnet fishing during the summer and also to drastically lower the fishing mortality target for the western cod stocks to F=0.25.
As of today, Thursday, November 29, 2012 over 838,120 people have signed a petition to stop wasteful discards.
The Council on 28-29 November will fix fishing opportunities for certain deep sea stocks for 2013 and 2014 (COM(2012)579). Discussions on the annual consultation between EU and Norway will also take place and the Danish delegation will brief the Council on the Norway pout stock.
The European Parliament has voted yes to new Baltic salmon management plan, to ban shark finning and gave overwhelming support to the report from Isabella Lövin (Greens/EFA, Sweden) on the external dimension of the CFP.
The flagship investigative journalism series “uppdrag granskning” from Swedish public broadcaster SVT1 will show a film on the collapse of the Baltic wild salmon population and the management failures that have caused the situation ahead of Thursday’s European Parliament plenary on the salmon management plan.
At a workshop in the European Parliament organised by Struan Stevenson (ECR, UK), the theory of balanced harvesting was discussed. Its proponents argue that fishing across a range of species, stocks and sizes could increase yields, address food security better than selectively avoiding juvenile fish and bycatch. However, they warn that the state of fish stocks and scientific research would need to be greatly improved before such a management system could be implemented.
At the European Parliament on 6-8 November, WWF handed over their peition to Ulrike Rodust (S&D, DE), rapporteur for the European Parliament on the basic regulation of the CFP reform.
In what used to be the world’s largest fishery, Peru has cut its anchovy quota by 68 %, to 810,000 tonnes, due to warmer water temperatures and high levels of discarding. This is the smallest allowable catch for 25 years and a fraction of 12 million tonnes caught in the early 1970s.
Today, the Fish for the Future (FFF) Bureau, a cross-party group of MEPs in the European Parliament, released a “Beginner’s Guide on the reform of the Common Fisheries Policy.” Their message is simple “we must fish less now so we can fish more tomorrow”.
Seismic testing involving loud airgun arrays, used to find deposits of oil and gas in the sea bed, may be used off the east coast of America next year. Environmental campaigners are trying to prevent this due to its effect on marine wildlife.