SCOTLAND’S fishermen will get the first indication today of how severe a regime they will face next year.
Leading marine scientists from the advisory committee of the International Council for the Exploration of the Seas (ICES) are due to publish their assessments on North Sea cod and other vital stocks on which trawlers in the Scottish whitefish fleet d
epend for their catches.
Their advice is used as the basis for the yearly quota catch limits and fisheries regime restrictions imposed by the European Union’s fisheries council at its end-of-year meeting in Brussels.
Last October, for the second year in succession, the marine scientists called for a total ban on cod catches in the North Sea, claiming it could take up to 12 years of closures before fragile stocks were restored to safe biological levels. The ICES report warned that, despite a slight improvement in the estimated spawning stock, cod in the North Sea was still at only one third of its safe biological limit.
They also claimed the true value of the cod biomass, and fishing mortality rates, may have been skewed by a "suspected increase in the proportion of unreported landings" - clandestine catches of so-called blackfish.
ICES recommended the cod fisheries in the North Sea, Irish Sea and West of Scotland waters remained closed until an initial recovery of the cod spawning stock biomass had been proved. The report warned that would take at least five years, and maybe as many as 12.
European ministers, however, eventually settled for severe restrictions on the cod quota for 2004 and imposed a permit regime for the North Sea white fish fisheries, as well as restricting Scottish trawlers to fishing only 15 days a month.
The prospects for next year appear equally bleak. Fishermen’s representatives from Britain, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands and Belgium were briefed by ICES scientists at the organisation’s headquarters in Copenhagen recently.
They were told that both the North Sea cod and plaice assessments suggested stocks were still very low but showing some small signs of recovery.
