EU fishers have raised concerns with the European Commission over scientific assessment of the status of central Baltic herring.
Members from the European Association of fish Producers Organisations (EAPO) met the Commissioner for the Environment, Virginijus Sinkevičius, to discuss issues around the quality of advice from the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES).
“We trust science,” said Esben Sverdrup-Jensen, EAPO president. “However, EAPO members are concerned with the quality of ICES’s advice on central Baltic herring issued after this year’s benchmark.”
“How can a stock that has been stable for more than 30 years suddenly be under critical thresholds, without clear indications in scientific surveys or in what fishers have observed?”
EAPO members underlined the need for greater transparency around ICES and are calling for the EC to ask that ICES revisits the recent assessment and its benchmarking procedures in general.
“The new and untested approach to ICES advice on this stock is not only considered controversial within the scientific community, it also seems to be out of touch with the reality at sea,” said Sverdrup-Jensen.
EAPO also asserts that the EC’s proposed decrease on sprat quotas is not in line with fishers’ expertise, who are capable of maintaining low bycatches of herring when targeting sprat, it says.
According to ICES advice, setting a rollover total allowable catch would ensure an increase in biomass of 20%, and EAPO is pushing for this option to be considered. Setting a rollover TAC would also limit the impact on Baltic Sea fishers which EAPO claims is estimated at more than €60m.
