‘Shocking – but not surprising,’ commented NAPA independent chair on the latest update on the state of the mackerel stock as ICES advised a 70% reduction in the 2026 TAC – alongside a 40% reduction in blue whiting a a 22% cut to the boarfish TAC.
‘NAPA has been calling for action to address this issue for five years. In that time, excess catches have totalled over one million tonnes above scientific advice. It has proven inevitable that there would be stark consequences not only for the species, but for all who depend on it for their livelihoods,’ she said, commenting that catches have been higher than the scientific advice in every year but one since 1998 – and have been 33% beyond what science considers safe limits each year on average for the past decade.
‘The severity of the state of the stock should serve as a jolt to get the next round of negotiations on track towards a meaningful compromise, and an agreed position for sustainable fishing,’ she said.
NAPA represents a coalition of global retailers, food service companies and suppliers, and has been working since 2020 to drive sustainable, science-driven management of mackerel, alongside two other key pelagic fish stocks in the North East Atlantic (blue whiting and Atlanto-Scandian herring).
‘If Coastal States don’t deliver a comprehensive catch sharing agreement in the next six months, many of our partners will be faced with difficult decisions about where they source product from. Coastal States must work together: it is the only way to safeguard the future of North East Atlantic mackerel and the ecosystems, businesses, and communities that rely on it,’ Aiofe Martin said.
Fishermen’s organisations have also been quick to react to the ICES bombshell – primarily by calling into doubt the reliability of the science behind the ICES recommendations.
‘It seems that absurdly cautious assumptions have prevailed over hard evidence. ICES advice has been highly variable in the past few years and we understand that this year it reflects an arbitrary choice of a recruitment period into the fishery,’ said Scottish Pelagic Fishermen’s Association (SPFA) chief executive Ian Gatt.
‘It is unacceptable that the viability of our industry should be jeopardised by an ICES best guess decision plugged into a computer model. In short, the same science with better assumptions would lead to a much better outcome for our industry.’
‘We utterly reject this new approach by ICES, in which reckless guesswork and fag-packet choices in analysing serious data result in recommendations that threaten a critical part of the UK’s fishing fleet and all the onshore businesses that depend on it,’ said Simon Collins of the Shetland Fishermen’s Association. ‘This is not how any scientific institution should conduct itself.’
Norwegian vessel operators’ federation Fiskebåt asserts that ‘mackerel stock research over the past fifteen years has been characterised by a massive lack of precision, uncertainty in methodology, belief or not in egg surveys and larval measurements, belief or not in acoustic measurements, belief or not in tag-recapture as a method, retrospective stock assessments, write-ups, write-downs and retrospective adjustments to estimates, mortality and taxation pressure.’
‘The result is a research history that leaves the impression of a science in the dark. We have seen this before,’ a Fiskebåt representative stated.
