ICES as revised its original advice for a 44% increase in the 2023 quota for North Sea cod, and now recommends a 26,008 tonne quota which represents a 63% increase on the 2022 quota.
ICES stated that this is a revision of its June advice, as the IBTS-Q3 survey shows a higher recruitment than was previously assumed which prompted the revision.
‘The catch advice for 2023 is now based on landings data for 1 January–30 June 2022, which were used to predict annual landings and catches (assuming the same discard ratio by age as in 2021) for the intermediate year. This corresponds to a reduction in fishing mortality in the intermediate year from 0.21 in June advice to 0.179,’ ICES stated.
Because the SSB (2022) is currently below Blim, ICES has provided the probability of SSB being below Blim in 2024 for each of the scenarios. Given the advised catch of 26,008 tonnes, the probability of SSB being below Blim in 2024 is 7.5%.
Cod in the North Sea is under the EU landing obligation, and Norway and UK national legislation regulating discards. The below minimum size (BMS) landings of cod reported to ICES are currently negligible and are much lower than the discards estimated by observer programmes.
Although F has reduced, recent catches have not been in line with ICES advice. The SSB remains below Blim, with an ongoing high risk of impaired recruitment.
Recreational catches are estimated to account for 4.3–7.6% of total removals between 2010–2020, but values are provisional and not included in the assessment due to unknown age structure in recreational catches and high uncertainty in the estimates.
The North Sea cod stock consists of reproductively isolated populations of Viking cod and Dogger cod, with the Dogger cod population extending to Division 6a (ICES, 2020a). These genetically different groups have different rates of sexual maturity and growth.
‘Whether the quota will ultimately be increased by 63% will be decided in December,’ ICES states
