Oceana asks the European Commission for a plan to completely eliminate discards.
According to Oceana, discarded fish constitutes 8% of the total weight of the world’s captures, or more than 7.3 million tons of fish that are thrown away at sea.
One out of every six kilos of fish captured in Europe never reaches the market because it is thrown away at sea; there are even fisheries so wasteful that up to five out of every six kilos of fish captured are thrown overboard. Many of these fisheries are the ones that have seen the biggest increases during the debates to determine this year’s fishing quotas.
“Discard” is defined by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) as “the portion of the catch that is thrown away at sea for one reason or another.” This practice is carried out worldwide and is most acute in trawling fisheries for demersal species, in which the percentage of discards can reach up to 90% of the total catch. Taking into account that these estimates are made in relation to the declared catch, the data may be much more alarming. Other estimates point to more than 20 million tons of discards annually around the world.
Oceana states that this activity not only absurdly overexploits fish populations, but also significantly interferes with the balance of the food chain by promoting the development of opportunistic species that feed on the discarded fish.
There are various reasons that lead a vessel to discard a percentage of its catch, but for the most part it is due to the commercial or management strategies currently in place.
The waters of the European Atlantic is a hot spot for this activity and, together with the fisheries of the Northeast Pacific, make up 40% of worldwide discards. It is estimated that discards can reach up to 1,300,000 tons of fish in the Northeast Atlantic alone. This fact is even more troubling if we take into account that current EU legislation actually forces the discarding of fish when, for example, the Total Allowable Catch (TAC) or minimum landing sizes are not met. Both measures are only applied to fish landed at port, but not to catches made at sea, and it is precisely these catches that have the most negative impact on fish populations and marine ecosystems.
One of Oceana’s requests is that the TAC’s determined by EU countries each year be established for catches and not landings, as the current system does not reflect the real volume of catches and therefore promotes this waste.
