The 43rd annual meeting of the North-East Atlantic Fisheries Commission (NEAFC) ended in disagreement over approaches to fisheries management and IUU responses.
The meeting, which was held in London, England, from 12 to 15 November, entailed NEAFC’s contracting parties – Denmark, which also represents the Faroe Islands and Greeland; the E.U; Iceland; Norway; Russia; and the U.K. – agreeing on conservation and management measures for 2025 for a number of fish stocks, including redfish, herring, mackerel, blue whiting, and Rockall haddock. A complete ban on fishing certain species, including porbeagle and orange roughy, was also agreed upon, and the parties agreed on a very limited quota for spurdog.
Contracting parties also agreed upon the importance of “cross-sectoral cooperation in the context of biodiversity protection and ecosystems-based management of fisheries” but could not agree on how to implement such cooperation.
In a release that the E.U.'s Directorate-General for Maritime Affairs and Fisheries issued after the meeting, the department said the bloc was the only contracting party that had called on Russia to cease alleged illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing activities.
“Russian vessels have been engaging in bottom-trawl fishing outside the designated fishing areas and without notifying NEAFC," the release said. "Fishing outside those areas is prohibited under the NEAFC recommendation aimed at protecting vulnerable marine ecosystems.”
Despite celebrating the shared commitment to catch limits for pelagic species, the directorate general noted a “lack of comprehensive sharing agreements and the non-cooperative attitude toward the coastal states’ consultations for Atlanto-Scandian herring.”
The E.U. also accused Russia of depleting redfish stocks in the Irminger Sea and the NEAFC of an inability to enforce its commitments.
“Despite previous prohibitions, Russia has undertaken directed and unsustainable fishing activities on these stocks. NEAFC decided to continue restricting port services for vessels carrying redfish catches," the E.U. department said. "However, the current measures have not proven to be restrictive. At the initiative of the E.U., NEAFC decided that Russian vessels fishing for Irminger Sea redfish would lose the right to access the ports of the E.U. The E.U. urged NEAFC parties to introduce the same measures as soon as possible and to restrict Russian vessels fishing for Irminger Sea redfish access to their waters to prevent unsustainable fishing.”
The Pew Charitable Trusts, which in advance of the NEAFC meeting issued a report urging the organization to adopt a multi-species management approach to fisheries, said in a release that the meeting had made “little progress on improving the existing management for some important NEAFC species.”
“NEAFC and its members’ management of major fisheries still requires urgent improvement," Pew International Fisheries Manager Jean-Christophe Vandevelde said. "While the governance failings for mackerel, Atlanto-Scandian herring, and blue whiting were raised by all NEAFC parties, no concrete path was identified to improve oversight and rein in the overfishing of these ecologically critical fish species."
In an October report authored by Vandevelde and Pew International Fisheries Officer Daniel Steadman, Pew Charitable Trusts argued that a multi-species approach to fish stock management was necessary to address the North Atlantic’s declining stocks.
The October report blamed the declining stocks on overfishing permitted by NEAFC’s contracting countries.
"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.
Without a holistic approach which considered multiple species at once, the Pew researchers argued the governments in question would never reach the biodiversity targets that they had previously agreed upon.
