ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT OF FISHERIES

The fisheries are not conducted by vessel using bottom contacting gear.

There are not significant levels of bycatches in the fisheries.

NEAFC’s request to ICES for scientific advice reads in part as follows:

“The recurring advice shall include information on the state of marine ecosystems and human impacts including historical developments in main parameters and information on the present state and recent development of stocks. The recurrent advice shall provide information on state of stocks and fisheries including - when available - historical developments in spawning stock biomass, total stock biomass, fishing mortality as well as landings and discards in the NEAFC regulatory area and within EEZs.”

“When providing its advice regarding fisheries ICES shall take account of all available information and the context of fisheries management including information from the fishing industry, ecosystem considerations, environment and hydrographical conditions, regulations in force that affect fisheries, factors affecting fishing operations and information about the fisheries, development of fisheries technology and relevant performance changes and other relevant factors that affect fishing or fish stocks.”

“If no management plan/strategy has been agreed by all relevant management parties or the agreed plan/strategy has been evaluated by ICES not to be consistent with the precautionary approach, ICES will provide advice applying the ICES MSY advice rule if possible or the precautionary approach if the information on the stocks is insufficient to support the MSY rule.”

“The advice shall be based on an ecosystem approach. This will be implemented incrementally so that any information on the interactions between fisheries, the fish stocks and the marine ecosystem is considered and incorporated in the advice as it becomes available; specifically, taking ecosystem and environmental considerations into account when providing the recurring advice mentioned above, ICES will:

Assess the extent to which fishing disturbs the marine ecosystems and, where reference levels have been established, compare the impact to the reference level chosen.

Provide any new information regarding the impact of fisheries on other components of the ecosystem including small cetaceans and other marine mammals, sea birds and sensitive habitats.

Inform NEAFC of any notable impact of other factors on and imbalances in ecosystem structure that may prejudice the stocks of commercially valuable species and its long term exploitation.

Propose reference points as guidance for management purposes in an ecosystem context.

ICES will in addition give warnings of any serious threats from fishing activities alone or in conjunction with any other relevant activity to local ecosystems or species as soon as ICES is aware of such threats.”

The full request for advice will be available on the NEAFC website from February 2021 (https://www.neafc.org/system/files/AM_2020-94_Request-to-ICES-for-advice-2021%28PECMAS_2020-02-10-Rev1%29.pdf).

Fisheries for mackerel in 2021 are managed through legally binding conservation and management measures adopted by NEAFC, Recommendation 20/2021 (https://www.neafc.org/system/files/Recommendation-20-Mackerel-2021.pdf).

There was not agreement on the level that total allowable catches should be set at, nor on allocation among the parties. The management measures oblige the parties to set catch limits for their fleets and notify them to NEAFC.

NEAFC’s Permanent Committee on Monitoring and Compliance reports annually to the NEAFC Commission on compliance by the Contracting Parties with Recommendations adopted by NEAFC. The latest such compliance report, relating to the year 2019, is accessible on the NEAFC website (https://www.neafc.org/compliance).

Information provided by the NEAFC Secretariat.

Sources referred to in this fact sheet are (in the order they are referred to):