Organisers of the Biannual Scottish Fishing Conference, being held in St Andrews on the 9-10th July, have announces that they have secured top speakers, representing Governments of Scotland, The Faroes and Norway, to add to a programme of talks and demonstrations. These key speakers will address delegates on the second day of the conference.
A study of the North Atlantic’s mackerel stocks by independent scientist Jens Christian Holst asks some uncomfortable questions of the current methods fisheries management and research. He suggests that feeding by a mackerel stock that has outgrown its usual food sources is the reason for declining seabird and salmon stocks, and that the size of the spawning stock has been drastically underestimated.
New fisheries management arrangements to help ensure that coastal communities make the most of their waters are to be trialled in the Outer Hebrides, Mull and the east coast of Scotland. Of the seven proposals submitted last year at the Scottish government’s invitation, following selection and public consultation, three are to be taken forward.
The harvest strategy in south-eastern Australia aims to maintain tiger flathead stocks at a pre-determined percentage of the pre-fishing biomass, referred to as the target reference point. The flathead stock has been above this target for many years so fishermen have enjoyed quotas designed to slightly reduce flathead stocks down to that reference point.
At a recent meeting of the North Sea Advisory Council, the European Commission made the announcement that UK stakeholders will be ejected from membership of the advisory councils from March 2019. According to the NFFO, it had been assumed by most people in the ACs that as the entire body of EU law will continue to apply to the UK during the transition, and as ACs are not decision making bodies, membership of the advisory council would remain unchanged until December 2020.
As had been expected, Icelandic fisheries minister Kristján Thór Júlíusson has followed the Marine Research Institute’s advice precisely in setting quotas for the 2018-19 quota year, which begins on 1st September.
An open tender to provide a Vessel Monitoring System (VMS) for Australian waters has been won by Icelandic tech company Trackwell. The new system is expected to manage thousands of commercial fishing vessels under Commonwealth, selective state and territory fisheries within the Australian EEZ.
ICES has recommended that the cod quota in the Barents Sea should not exceed 674,678 tonnes next year. This is a reduction of 100,000 tonnes in relation to this year's quota. According to Geir Huse at the Norwegian Institute of Marine Research, a natural decline in stocks has to be taken into consideration.
The catch limit for nephrops in the Farne Deeps has been cut for the third quarter of 2018 to help protect stocks, according to the Marine Management Organisation. The reduction is from 20 tonnes per vessel to 4 tonnes, while the planned fourth quarter catch limit of 20 tonnes remains unchanged.
The success story that the Falkland Islands’ fishing industry has become since the mid-1980s is now threatened by the prospect of crippling tariffs on its exports once the UK has left the European Union.