A new report from the Pew Charitable Trusts has argued that a multi-species approach to fish stock management is necessary to address the North Atlantic’s declining fish stocks.
The report, co-authored by Pew International Fisheries Manager Jean-Christophe Vandevelde and Pew International Fisheries Officer Daniel Steadman, placed blame for falling fish stocks squarely on overfishing permitted by the northern European and Nordic countries which manage the fisheries in the region, which include the E.U., Faroe Islands, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, and the U.K.
"These governments have not only failed in their obligations under the United Nations Fish Stocks Agreement to sustainably manage these fish; they are also jeopardizing predators such as seabirds, whales, and porpoises that may no longer have enough food in the water to keep their populations healthy," the report said. "As a result, regional governments are nowhere near meeting the biodiversity targets they agreed [to] under the Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) adopted by the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in December 2022.”
Vandevelde and Steadman argue that an ecosystem-based fisheries management (EBFM) approach is necessary to respond to the depletion crisis.
EBFM approaches stock management by considering the long-term needs of target species as well as their prey, predators, and habitat. According to a whitepaper produced by Pew, “EBFM can help ensure the long-term viability of global fisheries, as well as the species and ecosystems that they depend on.”
The goal of the report was to urge national governments to adopt EBFM at the Northeast Atlantic Fisheries Commission (NEAFC) meeting, which will be held 12 to 15 November in London, England.
Vandevelde and Steadman said that the sharp recent decline of mackerel and herring in the Northern Atlantic should offer a wakeup call to the NEAFC member states.
They pointed out the systemic issues with a single-species approach to stock conservation, noting that since mackerel prey on herring, the overfishing of herring has inevitably hurt the mackerel population, which in turn has endangered seabirds which feed on mackerel and herring in the Norwegian Sea. EBFM would require the member states to consider these relationships as they create regulations; current single-species approaches do not.
The report also said climate change is only exacerbating fish stock declines; mackerel, in particular, are temperature-sensitive and have shifted their ranges in response to rising sea temperatures.
“These species know no political boundaries, but their movement adds to regional tensions around sharing quotas and access to fisheries," the report said. “EBFM requires managers to consider interactions among species throughout the food web, from plankton to large predators, and to dynamically adapt fishing opportunities in response to predicted or observed changes in the environment, such as rising ocean temperatures."
