SCAR - Fish

The Standing Committee on Agricultural Research (SCAR) in 2012 agreed on the establishment of a policy-driven strategic group with the objectives to advise the Commission and Member States on research policies and research themes in order to better coordinate and direct these activities in support of the revised Common Fisheries Policy.

Furthermore the group shall develop collaboration between Member States in order to support cost efficient science and advice.



SCAR- Fish has prepared a draft discussion paper regarding prioritising of science and innovation in support of the CPF. The paper has been sent 25 November 2012 to a number of parties responsible for management and science issues, and it is open for input until 7th January.
Comments should be short and concise and forwarded to Michael Knudsen mikn@naturerhverv.dk.

• Draft SCAR Fish Report (25 November 2012) pdf

Terms of Reference

• SCAR Strategic Working Group (SWG) on Fisheries and Aquaculture

Working documents for SCAR-Fish

• The first meeting of SCAR-Fish took place 14th June 2012.
• The report from the first SCAR-Fish meeting
• Annotated agenda from the first SCAR-Fish meeting
• A Letter from SCAR-Fish and JPIOceans to The European Fisheries and Aquaculture Research Organisation (EFARO)

Members

• List of SCAR-Fish Members (updt. 01.08.2012)

Contact

• Chair of SCAR-Fish is Mogens Schou [msc@fvm.dk]
• Assistant Michael Knudsen [mikn@naturerhverv.dk]
• Jacques Fuchs (DG Research & Innovation) [jacques.fuchs@ec.europa.eu]

Nearly €6 billion in subsidies fuel Spain’s ravenous fleet!

Decades of overfishing have left Europe’s fish stocks in peril and its fishermen in poverty. It’s an impasse paid for by EU taxpayers. Yet a proposed revision of the EU’s fishing law, hailed as sweeping reform, is rapidly losing momentum.

Flag of convenience vessel registered in Falmouth.

A look at the industry’s biggest player — Spain — shows what officials are up against. Billions of euros in subsidies built its bloated fleet and propped up a money-losing industry. All the while companies systematically flout the rules while officials overlook fraud and continue to fund offenders, an investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists has found.

“Spain has earned its bad reputation,” said Ernesto Penas Lado, director of policy and enforcement at the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Maritime Affairs and Fisheries. “The problem is others don’t have the reputation and deserve it just as much.”

Spain may not be alone. But as the EU’s most powerful fishing fleet, it is the starkest example of a failed EU policy, critics say.

The Spanish fishing industry has received more than €5.8 billion (more than $8 billion) in subsidies since 2000 for everything from building new vessels and breaking down old ships to payments for retiring fishermen and training for the next generation, an unprecedented analysis by ICIJ shows. Subsidies account for almost a third of the value of the industry. Simply put, nearly one in three fish caught on a Spanish hook or raised in a Spanish farm is paid for with public money.

ICIJ’s analysis is the first in-depth look at just how much public aid Spain has received for fishing — primarily from EU taxpayers, but also from Madrid and regional governments. The country has cornered a third of all the EU’s fishing aid since 2000, far more than any other member state. The central government doles out even more for things such as low interest loans and funding for its largest industry associations, which in turn lobby the EU for more industry subsidies, records show. Since 2000, the sector has avoided paying €2 billion ($2.7 billion) in taxes on fuel to the Spanish Treasury.

Public monies also fund a surprising range of services. More than €82 million ($114 million) has been spent to promote the fishing sector through advertising and at trade shows. After fishing vessels were hijacked by pirates in the Indian Ocean, Spain in 2009 changed its law to allow vessels to hire private security forces onboard, and then it helped foot the bill to the tune of €2.8 million.

The root of the problem, regulators say, is that out-of-control subsidies encourage countries to build up already oversized fleets that are rapidly depleting the seas.

“Fish are not an unlimited resource,” said fisheries economist Andrew Dyck of the University of British Columbia. “When the public purse is the only thing propping this industry up, we are paying for resource degradation.”

The European Commission itself recently concluded that “too many boats continue to chase too few fish.” It blamed the situation, in large part, on subsidies.

Fish, not human rights

One of the most controversial forms of public aid pays for foreign fishing licenses. With its own waters increasingly empty of fish, the EU buys rights to the fishing grounds of developing countries such as Morocco, Mozambique and the Ivory Coast.

Green groups, fishing experts and some EU politicians have criticized the agreements, saying European fishermen take advantage of poor countries that often lack knowledge and resources to protect their fish stocks. And key agreements cost more than they return on the value of fish; that is the case with Morocco, where each euro invested returns only €0.65 in value added, according to a study funded by the EU.

The Spanish industry has received more than €800 million ($1.15 billion) in foreign licenses over the past decade — about two-thirds of the EU licenses overall, according to the ICIJ analysis.

The agreements have the support of Carmen Fraga Estévez, the EU Parliament’s most powerful legislator on fisheries issues. A sharp-tongued politician with an encyclopedic knowledge of the industry, Fraga served as fishing secretary in Spain and has held a seat in the Parliament’s committee on fisheries — which she now chairs — for 17 years. Her loyalty to the industry appears to be so deep that when she had to choose between human rights and fish, she voted for the latter.

“The Fisheries Committee has to discuss fisheries issues, not human rights,” she was quoted in the press as saying when in 2009 the committee for the first time voted down a fishing agreement. Days before the vote, 157 civilians died after Guinea’s totalitarian regime opened fire on pro-democracy protesters. The agreement would have handed the Guinean government €450,000 ($639,000) a year for fishing licenses.

Fraga Estévez declined requests for interviews from ICIJ.

Spanish member of the European Parliament (MEP) Josefa Andrés Barea said the subsidized foreign fishing licenses are vital. When Spain entered the EU in 1986, very few Spanish vessels were allowed in the Union’s waters. So fishing in foreign waters was — and still is — the only way for many ship owners to make a living. And if Spain isn’t fishing, she said, less savory global players will scoop up the catch instead. "There's a fundamental problem here which is that major [fishing] powers like China will be there if we're not. And they don't have any rules,” Andrés said. “They're much more predatory than we are."

Fewer fish, poorer fishermen

EU waters are among the world’s most exploited. Scientists say three quarters of assessed fish stocks are overfished. Eels once served as a delicacy are so depleted scientists doubt they can recover despite a Europe-wide rescue plan. Irish Sea Cod, Baltic Sprat and West of Scotland herring are all on the downfall.

The trend stretches across the globe. In 2006, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization estimated that 75 percent of the world fish stocks were fished to the very limit of — or beyond — sustainable levels. In its latest report, from last year, that figure had risen to 85 percent.

“Europe has a long and dark history of overfishing,” said Boris Worm, one of the world´s most renowned marine biologists, working at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, Canada. In a 2003 study, Worm showed that industrialized fishing has, since 1950, emptied the oceans of nine out of 10 fish longer than 20 inches such as salmon, cod and halibut.

Fewer fish mean fewer — and poorer — fishermen. Across the EU, the sector often costs taxpayers more than it produces. According to a recent report by the environmental group Oceana, at least eight countries received more money in public aid in 2009 than the value of their landed fish.

The fishing industry was the only segment of Spain’s economy that shrunk in the 2000s. The northwestern region of Galicia more than anywhere else in Europe relies on the industry — and the subsidies — to stay afloat. Yet the area lost a third of its fisheries-related jobs in the decade leading up to 2006.

In the Galician port of Vigo on the Atlantic coast, more fish pass across the docks headed for consumers’ plates than in any other port in the world. Coastal towns are riddled with signs boasting subsidized fishing projects. Politicians include the sector as a central theme in their campaigns.

The industry’s power was propelled by the 1960s push for industrialization by the fascist Franco regime. Franco himself was an avid fisherman and a Galician by birth.

“Economically the [fishing] industry is between the tomato and the potato. But politically it is more important than any other industry,” said EU’s head of fisheries control Valérie Lainé. The sector “has always been protected by the government — without the industry, Vigo would be dead, Galicia would be dead.”

The powerful Galician industry group ARVI, which boasts of its close ties to lawmakers, acknowledged that fishing wouldn’t be viable without public funding. In a recent position paper, it encouraged politicians to support subsidies to modernize outdated vessels, fish in foreign waters and build new on-shore cold storage.

Meanwhile subsidies steadily flow to the region, but sometimes only make things worse.

Víctor Muñiz has relied on fishing for decades. He used to own vessels, as did his father before him. Not anymore. Now they operate a fish processing plant in the Galician town of Meaño. The factory was renovated in 2009 with EU subsidies to process and freeze up to 300 tons of fish per hour; it was expected to employ 100 people. But the brand new machinery stands silent.

“There should be 10 trucks with mackerel here,” Muñiz said in a bitter tone as he walked through the 8,000 square meter plant in April. But within 20 days of the start of the season, most vessels had already scooped up their entire mackerel quota.

Muñiz said the quota is too low, but his major frustration is that too many factories like his were subsidized in the first place.

“You present a €2 million project, and they give you 60 percent. You’ve told them how much fish you're going to produce and what kind. Somebody should have told the processing plants: ‘No, sorry, this is the quota for mackerel.’”

Policy in Shambles

By 2006 it was clear that EU’s fishing policy was in shambles. Fleets were bloated. Stocks were crashing.

Researchers commissioned by the EU drafted a series of reviews of the community’s fisheries law — the Common Fisheries Policy, which will govern the fleet for at least a decade. One little-known document is informally called the “Frankenstein report” because of its damning conclusions. It lays the blame squarely on influence-driven subsidies: The sector would be broke without them.

Swedish Green Party MEP Isabella Lövin said the key problem of the EU fisheries policy is that it was “modeled after agricultural policy. You provide fertilizer and farming equipment, you get more vegetables. So they used the same model in fishing — you increase the number of boats, you get more fish. But it doesn’t work that way,” she said. “You end up with less fish.”

Subsidies over the past decades built a bloated EU fleet that plundered fish stocks. Efforts to reduce the capacity have focused on paying companies to break down old vessels. But that reduction has been undercut by subsidies given to modernize existing vessels, enabling them to catch more and more fish.

According to the 394-page “Frankenstein report”, EU-countries need to cut capacity in half and severely restrict — and adhere to — quotas for fish stocks to recover.

But Spanish Fishing Secretary Alicia Villauriz said policymakers must consider more than capacity. “You cannot make a statement saying: If you reduce the fleet everything will be more profitable. You'll also destroy a lot of employment.” Any transition, she said, would need to happen slowly.

That the European fleet was bloated was nothing new — calls to cut it down began in the 1980s. But the aid kept rolling in to build new ships and modernize old ones. “The sector has managed to attract more financial resources than would be justified under normal conditions,” the “Frankenstein” report said.

The EU researchers also found that groups set up to advise the Commission on a new fishing policy — largely made up of industry representatives — consider the platform “mainly as a channel for political influence, and secondly as a forum for discussion” of the new law.

In short: They were lobbying for their interests instead of trying to find solutions.

The EU-commissioned “Frankenstein” report concluded that EU policy did “not provide the right incentives for responsible fishing, or may even induce irresponsible fishing.”

Turning a blind eye

Protected stocks worth as much as $23 billon (€16.7 billion) are illegally traded worldwide every year — making the black market in fish more valuable than smuggling stolen art. Many of the players in the illicit trade set up shell companies in places that do not adhere to international conventions protecting the oceans.

Spanish nationals register more vessels to “flag-of-convenience” countries than any other besides Panama, Honduras and Taiwan — which are themselves considered nations where a ship-owner can register its boats without having to adhere to strict tax or safety requirements, and can operate without oversight.

It is rare for the Commission to take a member state to court. The EU Court of Justice — Europe’s highest court — has found Spain guilty three times of failing to implement EU fishing laws. Spain has refused to enforce catch limits, police its fleet or impose adequate punishment, the court ruled. One of Spain’s most widely criticized shortfalls is policing its port of Las Palmas on the Canary Islands off the Moroccan coast. Illegal shipments of fish plundered from West African waters regularly filter into the EU through the port, according to multiple investigative reports.

Fishing Secretary Villauriz said control in Spain is expensive because of the sheer size of its industry — more than 10,000 fishing boats, 3,084 miles of coastline and 47 major ports. “But that doesn't mean we're not taking care of our obligations in control matters” she added.

The Spanish Ministry of Environment, Agriculture and Fisheries told ICIJ that inspections have nearly doubled since 2004 to 9,323 in 2010. That’s still far from the number of inspections other countries are carrying out — the United Kingdom logged nearly 50,000 inspections in 2004.

But some things don’t appear to have changed. The number of inspectors in the port of Vigo — Europe's largest fishing port — remains the same as in 2003, when EU officials blasted Spain for the measly number of national inspectors at its ports. Today four inspectors oversee more than 700,000 metric tons of fish a year — that’s nearly 20,000 kilos of fish per inspector for every hour of every day of the year, including Christmas.

Subsidized offenders

Spanish officials, like those in many other EU countries, do not take into account whether its nationals have been involved in the illegal fishing trade before doling out public aid.

Neither Spain nor the EU will make public information about offenders who have been fined for illegal fishing — also called Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated fishing (IUU). But a sliver of insight can been gleaned from a database of appellate court rulings. ICIJ reviewed every court case adjudicated since 2000 in which subsidized companies unsuccessfully appealed fines imposed by the Spanish government. In more than 80 percent of cases in which the appellant could be identified, firms continued to receive subsidies after the court had upheld penalties, the analysis shows.

There’s only one case in which the ministry of fisheries tried to prevent a company from receiving subsidies, according to ministry officials.

That Spanish ship-owner so exemplifies the quagmire as to make it a near cliché. Government officials and international regulators have repeatedly targeted Vidal Armadores for its alleged involvement in a decade-old international network of pirate fishing vessels, court and law enforcement records show. Brussels demanded multiple times that Spain recover subsidies and “take action against” Vidal Armadores. At least through 2010, however, Spain and the EU continued to pay the firm — at least €8.2 million ($12 million) since 1996. Last year the government finally fined the company and cut off aid, but the case is pending appeal.

In an interview with ICIJ, one of the firm owners, Manuel Antonio Vidal Pego, denied allegations of illegal fishing and said the company was entitled to the subsidies it received.

Like Vidal Armadores has in the past, seafood giant Pescanova targets Patagonian toothfish — sold in the U.S. as Chilean sea bass. Unlike Vidal Armadores, Pescanova is a member of an association that fights illegal fishing. In Spain, it boasts a trusted motto: “Lo bueno sale bien,” translated as “Good things go well.” But the company has its own troubles.

Last year Pescanova’s U.S. subsidiary pleaded guilty to illegally importing $1.2 million worth of toothfish. While that case — nicknamed “Operation Toothless” — was pending, the U.S. Department of Justice launched a second investigation into another allegedly illegal importation. The status of the second investigation is unknown.

Pescanova is one of the Europe’s three largest seafood companies, with a fleet of around 100 boats fishing worldwide and annual sales of €1.53 billion (more than $2 billion). Yet, since 1995 the company has pulled in more than €175 million ($250 million) in subsidies, according to the ICIJ analysis.

Pescanova repeatedly declined requests for interviews from ICIJ. “We've had 50 years of positive history,” said spokesman Angel Matamoro during a brief phone exchange. “I don't think you're asking about themes that will promote our image.”

Regarding the U.S. investigations, he said, “Whatever we had to say, we said it to the U.S. court. The company follows scrupulously the law in every country it’s in.”

Another firm that broke the law and continued to receive aid is Albacora, one of the largest tuna companies in Europe. The company’s boat Albacora Uno last year was fined $5 million — the largest fine in U.S. history — for illegally placing fishing gear in U.S. waters multiple times during a two-year period. The boat was built with subsidies and used subsidized fishing licenses. And even after the U.S. fined the firm, Spain granted Albacora €1.8 million ($2.6 million) worth of subsidies to fish in foreign waters.

The Spanish ministry of fisheries told ICIJ it had fined Albacora but will not deny the company further aid.

Albacora director Jon Uria said the 67 infringements were an “isolated” incident. The company was unaware of the infractions, he said, until the U.S. government alerted executives. In his view, the fine was disproportionate to the offense.

A Radical Reform?

Javier Garat is the Spanish industry’s most visible and eloquent lobbyist. He was born into the family that cofounded Albacora. Garat is now a shareholder of the company, but he says that doesn’t influence his lobbying.

In his meetings with officials, he often requests subsidies for the sector. “That money has generated wealth,” he said. “It’s been used to modernize an obsolete fishing sector” so that today “we have better, more modern, more secure vessels.”

Garat heads Spain’s powerful lobbying group Cepesca as well as the Europe-wide industry group Europêche — both of which operate with EU subsidies. In the halls of the ministry of fisheries in Madrid, the word is that Garat will be appointed Spain’s next fishing secretary.

Following closed-door meetings at the ministry in April, Garat and Spanish Minister of Environment, Agriculture and Fisheries Rosa Aguilar announced that the ministry and Cepesca were devising a “common roadmap to defend Spanish interests” in the overhaul of the EU fishing policy.

After two years of deliberation, the European Commission presented its proposed legislation in July. No one but the Commissioner herself appears satisfied with the draft. But the negotiations have just begun. Political alliances and lobbying will determine the final language to be voted upon before the law goes into effect January 1, 2013.

Garat called the reform draft “cowardly.” He said the Commission succumbed to pressure from environmentalists and biased media “without taking into consideration the repercussions on the fishing sector.” In his view, the state of the fish stocks is not as “catastrophic” as Commission officials appear to believe.

Yet it seems the industry’s efforts have staved off its worst nightmares.

Nothing came of ambitions to make overfishing a crime, as happened in the U.S. under the Magnuson-Stevens Act, or to require quotas be consistent with what scientists say is biologically sustainable. There was no proposal on how to limit the oversized fishing fleet or to implement quotas in the fishing agreements with foreign countries.

EU’s top fisheries official Commissioner Maria Damanaki told ICIJ her proposal is “radical.” She said Brussels will stop directly subsidizing the industry. “Now we are going to give money in a very prudent way and under very strict conditions,” she said. “And we are going to ask for paybacks in the case of illegal fishing.”

Damanaki also highlighted proposed changes in the fishing partnership agreements. “We are going to call them sustainable fisheries agreements because we're going to fish only for the surplus — if there is any surplus,” she said. “Also, we're going to respect human rights in these areas.”

Given the hype, Green party MEP Lövin said, “I had expected a clause on human rights.” But the human rights clause originally in the legislative text was missing from the final proposal.

Lövin ran for office on a ticket pledging to change the fishing policy. She said the proposal is a lot less radical than she had hoped — especially as the coming negotiations will water it down even more. “The law can´t allow for politicians to compromise with the environment when long-term environmental goals clash with short-term profit,” she said.

Ernesto Penas Lado, director of the European Commission’s fisheries policy unit, said the mindset in Spain and among fishing nations globally is that no single country feels responsible for the fate of the fish in the sea.

“It’s the tragedy of the commons,” he said. “Because the resources belong to no one, they belong to everyone.” In the EU, 27 countries have to come to a consensus on a common fishing policy. There’s no mentality of making a sacrifice for preservation, Penas said. “People think: Whatever I do not fish, my neighbor will.”

David Cabo (Spain), Fredrik Laurin (Sweden) and Brigitte Alfter (Denmark) contributed to this story.

The Lessons of Recovery: Taking stock after a Decade of Cod Recovery Measures

As EU and Norway and then next month the EU Council of Ministers, stand poised to depart from central pillars of the Cod Plan¹ it is timely and perhaps instructive to take a look at the past decades’ efforts to rebuild the cod stocks in European waters.

 
In December 2003, European fishermen united to hold an impressive but ultimately unsuccessful, fleet demonstration in Antwerp to voice opposition to the Commission’s proposal to introduce days-at-sea restrictions on vessels that caught any significant amount of cod within the Cod Recovery Zone.
Only a few years later, in 2008, the Council agreed that the original Plan³ wasn’t working and a new Plan⁴ was required.

After a period during which recovery appeared stalled, the biomass of cod has now increased in the North Sea for six successive years; although it is inarguable that the rate of rebuilding of the cod stocks, and the reduction of fishing mortality on which this largely depends, would have been much more rapid had ways of reducing regulatory driven discards been found and applied earlier.

The picture in the Irish Sea and West of Scotland is very different. ICES scientists are at a loss to explain what is happening in the Irish Sea other that there is a high level of unaccounted mortality. In the West of Scotland, in addition to predation by the high seal population, TAC driven discards are recognised as the main impediment to recovery. It is clear that in these two cases the central planks of the Cod Plan, reduced TACs, underpinned by effort control, have failed.

It should not be forgotten that for environmental reasons we appear to be in a period of low productivity for cod, with a series of low year classes and low recruitment, which doesn’t help in rebuilding the stocks. And even after fishing mortality has been reduced to target levels for recovery, it can take some time before the stocks respond.

Nevertheless, the Celtic Sea, the area which the NFFO and others had successfully fought to keep out of the Cod Recovery Zone and “recovery” measures such as effort control, has seen a dramatic improvement in its cod stocks. In 2011 the TAC for cod was increased by 151% to reflect that improvement.

What Works; What Doesn’t?
Given the plethora of intertwined measures introduced to address the problem of declining cod stocks, it is not easy to determine which measure has delivered in terms of reducing fishing mortality on cod. We are helped in drawing conclusions by the work of STECF which was charged with the task of evaluating the most recent plan and then describing options for improvement. Nevertheless, there great scope for subjectivity in deciding on the question of ascribing weight to each factor:

The measures
Measures to reduce fishing mortality on cod, introduced at various times from 1999, onwards on have included

• Mesh size increase and various gear geometry rules to improve selectivity
• Fishing vessel decommissioning, using public funds to reduce the size of the fleet targeting cod or catching cod as a by-catch
• Effort Control – days-at-sea restrictions
• Landing Controls such as designated ports, reporting requirements etc.
• Dramatically reduced TACs
• Since 2008, various types of cod avoidance, including real time closures and Catch Quota trials using CCTV and incentivised selectivity

Even harder to weigh but undoubtedly significant, have been attitudinal changes within the fishing industry linked, at least in the UK, to the allocation of quota from decommissioned vessels and the ability to acquire quota, allowing vessels to operate legally despite the huge TAC reductions. Similar changes to the quota management regime in Denmark, the second largest cod catching member state, have been significant.

A further complication in assessing which measures worked and which didn’t is seen the way that the effort control regime undermined improvements in gear selectivity as vessel owners fled the punitive regime for vessels using larger mesh sizes to smaller mesh fisheries such as nephrops. STECF concluded that for this reason, the average mesh size in use in the North Sea decreased over the period despite an increase in the minimum mesh size for vessels targeting the larger whitefish from 90mm to 120mm. This trend is likely to have been reversed more recently through incentivised changes to the gear deployed.

STECF’s conclusions were that TAC reductions and effort control have been inadequate in reducing fishing mortality on cod, although the measures introduced have contributed to the rebuilding of other demersal species. TAC reductions in mixed fisheries have generated large levels of discarding of cod and effort control has produced perverse effects that undermined the improvements in gear selectivity and often intensified fishing activity, during the time the vessels are permitted to go to sea.

On the other hand, the changes to the Cod Plan in 2008, and specifically the provisions for encouraging cod avoidance and discard reduction, were identified as producing positive and significant results, even if hampered by an overly bureaucratic mind-set by those who wrote the Regulation.

Where Now?
In the next few weeks we will see if the lessons learnt over the last 10 years will be applied to the current cod regime. There is much at stake:

• If the 20% reduction in the North Sea Cod TAC in the Cod Plan is followed , the industry, member states and scientists all agree this will lead to a huge increase in discards and a setback for those parts of the plan that do work, such as incentivised cod avoidance: EU and Norway have the power to take a different course during their negotiations for an annual reciprocal fisheries agreement
• The Council of Ministers has the legal authority to freeze the pre-programmed effort reductions that are required under the Cod Plan. The Council begins on 18th December.
• TAC decisions in the Irish Sea and West of Scotland made at the Council will be significant. The key question will be whether the Council follows the TAC decisions predetermined in the Cod Plan in the full knowledge that reductions will achieve nothing in terms of reducing mortality, or whether the first steps towards a new approach will be taken. Specifically, will there be a move towards adoption of the type of approach outlined in the North West Waters RAC advice Breaking the Cycle of Decline to rebuild the cod stocks in a more rational way by addressing the discard issue?

In the slightly longer term, the Commission has proposed an amended interim Cod Plan which addresses most of the most glaring problems in the current plan, pending the development of full mixed fishery ICES and the emergence of a full mixed- fishery plan. The interim regime should be adopted through co-decision during the first half of next year.

10 Years On: Lessons Learnt
After 10 years of cod recovery measures it is possible to say that those who took part in the Antwerp fleet demonstration have been vindicated: effort control has been a colossal distraction. It is difficult to demonstrate that restrictions on time-at-sea has directly saved a single cod; yet it has caused great social and economic dislocation and huge difficulties fisheries for administrators and the industry. Most tellingly, STECF has concluded that there is no linear relationship between effort reductions and a reduction in fishing mortality. It is inconceivable if this had been widely understood in 2003 that ministers would have adopted a plan based on it.

On the other hand publicly funded decommissioning is now vilified by the EU Court of Auditors and the Commission. But it is difficult to envisage the dramatic reduction in fishing mortality in the North Sea cod or plaice fisheries, or the Celtic Sea demersal fishery without this decisive intervention in a number of member states, including the UK.

Perhaps one of the most significant lessons and certainly the most costly to learn in that in mixed fisheries such as ours is that drastic TAC reductions generate huge discards of mature cod, unless accompanied by intelligent supplementary measures

Without compliance, regulation is pointless and over the past 10 years it is possible to see a dramatic change within the industry as blackfish has been pushed from centre stage to the margins. It should be remembered however that compliance requires profitability as a precondition; and it is all too easy to generate discards if the issues are not thought through.

Long Term Management Plans offer the prospect of setting long term objectives and moving progressively towards those goals bringing stability into TAC decisions; nevertheless it is important that such plans have an escape clause that allows fisheries managers to address various types of unforeseen eventualities.

Cod Avoidance in its various forms has proved that it has great potential if it is approached creatively; but it can only work if there is a correspondence between the TAC and the fish on the grounds and it makes sense at vessel level. At present, additional quota and effort exemptions are used to incentivise cod avoidance but the perverse side effects of effort restrictions suggest that it should be replaced as soon as is practical. Imaginative forms of fully documented fisheries are probably the key to moving forward here.

A Plan based on an undue focus on a single species within the context of a mixed and multi-species fishery is going to struggle to achieve its objectives. The future will be about designing long term management plans with the mixed fishery and multi-species dimension at its heart.

Turning Point
There is reason to believe that we have reached a turning point – but only if the Commission, member states and European Parliament learn the lessons of the last decade. Even where, as in the Irish Sea and West of Scotland, the scientific assessments do not yet point towards rapidly rebuilding stocks, the flaws in the current approach have been recognised and we can begin to do something about them. The speed at which this will take place is largely dependent on the untried co-decision process with decisions in the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament.
In the North Sea, the priority must be avoiding taking a backward step by blindly following the provisions of a plan that has been evaluated and found to be flawed.

Notes
¹Actually plans, because the North Sea TAC is set in relation to a long term management plan agreed between EU and Norway but over the last 10 years all other EU cod TACs and the effort regime have been decided unilaterally by the EU Council of Ministers. Following the Lisbon Treaty, there is a bitter dispute between the Council and the European Parliament over who has competence in the area of setting TACs when these are decisions are predetermined by a long term management plan. The dispute shows every sign of heading to the European Court of Justice for resolution.

²Cod Recovery Zone: North Sea, West of Scotland, Irish Sea and Eastern Channel.

³Cod Recovery Plan (EC. 423/2004) covering the North Sea, Irish Sea, West of Scotland, Kattegat and Eastern Channel.

⁴Cod Management Plan (EC. No. 1342/2008 of 18th December 2008 establishing a long term plan for cod stocks and fisheries exploiting those stocks

 

Courtesy of the NFFO web site.

How the subsidies break down

 

Go back to the story.

The fishing industry has avoided paying the hefty fuel taxes levied on other Spanish citizens. ICIJ calculated what the industry would have paid if it were subject to the same taxes as the average citizen.

   

The European Commission buys fishing rights in foreign waters on behalf of the EU fleet. Spain gets more than 60 percent of those licenses.

Capacity is boosted by construction and modernization of fishing vessels, replacing engines, and improving energy efficiency and on-board working conditions.

   

Breaking down or “scrapping” older vessels is one way countries have tried to reduce their bloated fleets.

   

Subsidies pay for advertising and promotional campaigns as well as participation in trade fairs.

   

In 2010, fishing companies received money to hire private armed guards to protect vessels in the Indian Ocean. Much of the money went to just six companies.

   

Graphic by Ajani Winston/iWatch News

About Looting the Seas

Looting the Seas is a two-year project by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists looking at the forces that are rapidly depleting the oceans of fish. This new installment in the series focuses on Spain, the most powerful fishing nation in a region where economies and fish stocks are in shambles.

An ICIJ team set out to investigate how Spain’s fishing industry wielded that power at home, in Brussels and overseas.

Reporters from Spain, Uruguay, New Zealand, Australia, Sweden, Belgium, Namibia and the United States dug through thousands of pages of scientific reports, court files, investigation reports and official correspondence. The team analyzed reams of subsidy data, employed DNA testing and conducted more than 200 interviews with politicians, fishermen, lobbyists, inspectors, prosecutors, economists and scientists.

A detailed methodology is included here.

Our media partners are The Sunday Times (UK), El País (Spain), EU Observer (Brussels), Huffington Post (US) and Trouw (The Netherlands)

The team:

Project Manager: Kate Willson

Editors: Marina Walker Guevara and Fredrik Laurin

Reporters: Mar Cabra, Marcos García Rey, John Grobler, Nicky Hager and Brigitte Alfter

Data Editor: David Donald

Data Analysis: David Cabo and Mar Cabra

Web: Sarah Whitmire

Video: Emma Schwartz

Graphics: Ajani Winston

To see a comprehensive list of foundations that support ICIJ, click here.

Spains`s subsidised fishing fleet a brutal waste of UK taxpayers` money

In a region with dwindling fish stocks and impoverished fishermen, the powerful Spanish fishing industry has received nearly €6 billion in EU subsidies amid claims of extensive fraud and a history of rule-breaking, a team of reporters from the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists has revealed.

"This report shows how UK taxpayers' money is being used by the EU – totally wasted," Nigel Farage MEP, UKIP leader and member of the EP Fisheries Committee said today.

"The Common Fisheries Policy has produced an economic and ecological disaster. We now see clearly that the Spanish fishing industry is over-sized, over-subsidised and its waters over-fished. The basic problem is that fishing in Europe is now under the control of the EU, and we can observe that anything it touches, be it Agricultural policy or fisheries policy, is an expensive exercise in economic waste.

"The heavily subsidised Spanish fishing fleet and fishless waters show a brutal waste of UK taxpayers' money.

 

"This situation can only stop when each country once again is responsible for its own waters and looks after the fish in its own water. To get rid of the Common Fisheries Policy we need to pull out of the EU and double quick too."

 

There's some interesting reading from the Centre for Public Integrity's web site available here:

Budding Rose, forty knots and fresh, feezing!

Forty knots and fresh, feezing spray blast the pair trawler Budding Rose as she steams under the stern of her pair-partner, Lapwing. The two boats have their own web site and are regular contributors to Twitter and the web with their postings from sea on all things fishy out their in the North Sea.