A new study by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) claims that fisheries ministers rarely follow the scientific advice when making decisions about fishing quotas.
The WWF released the report just days before the EU Parliament has scheduled a key vote on fisheries reform.
“The European Parliament needs to see what a bad job fisheries ministers have been doing over the past decade,” said Tony Long, director of the WWF’s European policy office. “One extraordinary example of this is a deviation of 264 percent above scientific advice for Sole in 2008. MEPs now have a unique opportunity and the power to right a wrong and the answer is simple — listen to science and let fish stocks recover.”
The report indicates that over the past nine years fisheries ministers’ decisions reflected scientific advice 13 percent of the time. The report also showed ministers set fishing quotas on average about 45 percent higher than recommended, roughly 6.2 million tons of fish over recommended levels, which the report called “legalized overfishing.”
In Europe, according to the WWF, nearly half the seafood stocks in the northeast Atlantic are overfished, and that number is as high as 80 percent in the Mediterranean.
“Continuing this way will prove devastating not only to Europe’s fish stocks but also to the fishing industry in the long-term, where we will see a decline in profits and income for fishermen, unless the upcoming EU fisheries reform ensures that fish stocks are recovered and managed at sustainable levels,” the WWF said in a release.
