EU tuna fleet threatened

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The Association of National Organizations of Fishing Enterprises in the EU (Europêche) insists that Europe’s control rule on margin of tolerance is incompatible with fishing operations in the tropical tuna purse seine fishery.

EU tuna

The control rule on margin of tolerance is currently incompatible with the conditions and specificities inherent to the fishing operations in the tropical tuna purse seine fishery, warns Europêche

Europêche advises that for several months, ANABAC, OPAGAC and ORTHONGEL, which represent the European distant-water fleet fishing tropical tunas, have warned EU authorities about the impossibility for them to comply with the control regulation on margin of tolerance. This rule requires there to only be a maximum difference of 10% per species between the estimates on board and the actual landed catches.

They argue that operating under temperatures above 30°C, skippers only have a few minutes to sort and freeze their catches before the fish becomes unfit for human consumption, and they have explained that similar target tuna species cannot be easily distinguished from each other in such a short time.

While technological solutions are being studied by the fleet, these will take several years to develop. As such, the tropical tuna fleet has requested to be able to apply the 10% margin of tolerance for the whole catch on board and not per species.

Europêche Tuna Group Director Anne-France Mattlet said that while the European Parliament has adopted a position that takes into account the specificities of the fishing operations in the purse seine fishery, the European Commission has refused to bring any flexibility to the rule, and that this has led to ships and skippers being sanctioned again and again, and accumulating points on their licences.

“This will unequivocally lead to the suspension of the fishing licenses and the immobilisation of EU vessels. On the meanwhile, non-EU vessels will keep fishing since they are not subject to the same control, environmental, health and social rules. Some non-EU countries do not even apply the catch limits decided at international level,” she said.

According to independent economic analysis conducted on behalf of ORTHONGEL and the French tuna purse seine fleet, if nothing changes, the weight of the sanctions on the turnover will be so unbearable that shipowners and 1,600 jobs will disappear by 2026.

This situation might be even worse since the study did not consider the increasing costs of fuel nor the deficit accumulated during COVID.

These conclusions are equally valid for the Spanish fleet, with over 2,500 fisher jobs hanging on by a thread, said Europêche.