Environmental News Service
Northern European Cod Collapse Predicted
COPENHAGEN, Denmark, October 28, 2002 (ENS) - Scandinavians who once
depended on abundant codfish as a staple food, will have to eat something
else, and lovers of fish and chips will not find cod in the deep fry. Cod
populations from the waters off western Norway to the Atlantic shores of
Scotland are now so depleted that "all fisheries in this area that target
cod should be closed," scientists from the International Council for the
Exploration of the Seas (ICES) warned Friday in their latest six month
report.
The chance of "a collapse must be seriously considered," scientists from the
council have advised the European Commission and the European Union national
governments.
Juvenile codfish caught in a gill net (Photo courtesy U.S. National Undersea
Research Program)
The council's Advisory Committee on Fisheries Management releases two
reports per year reviewing in total 135 fish and shellfish stocks. For the
past 17 years, the amount of cod reproducing themselves in this area is
calculated to have been below the biomass precautionary approach reference
point.
Fisheries closures may give the cod in the North Sea, Skagerrak, the Irish
Sea and waters west of Scotland a chance to recover from overfishing by
large pelagic trawls that have brought numbers to their lowest ever recorded
levels, the council says.
But even these closures might not be enough to save the cod fishery. The
ICES report admits that current cod populations are "so far below historic
sizes that both the biological dynamics of the stock and the operations of
the fisheries are unknown."
Cod stocks in the Irish Sea remain "outside of safe biological limits," the
report says, and the authors do not consider historic experience and data
"reliable for medium term forecasts" of fish population dynamics under
various rebuilding scenarios.
Last year, ICES warned that the "spawning stock biomass" of cod in the North
Sea was at a new historic low, saying that the "risk of stock collapse is
high."
As part of an emergency recovery plan, a large part of the North Sea was
closed for cod fishing for 10 weeks in February, March and April 2001 to
protect juvenile cod. The total allowable catch was was set at about half of
the 2000 quota, and technical measures were put in place. Still, the North
Sea cod have not recovered.
Codfish drying in Lofotens, Norway
(Photo courtesy NAArc)
Cod are also caught as a by-catch in mixed fisheries, such as haddock,
whiting, flatfish, shrimp and prawn fisheries.
The situation is so serious that ICES is recommending these fisheries as
well as the cod fishery itself should be closed unless they can demonstrate
that they are not causing a cod by-catch.
In fisheries where cod comprises solely an incidental catch, there should be
stringent restrictions on the catch and discard rates of cod, the council
said, and called for effective monitoring of compliance with those
restrictions.
The advice of ICES' Advisory Committee on Fisheries Management forms the
main scientific input to European Union ministers' annual round of
bargaining over total allowable catches and national quotas, which this year
threaten to be even more acrimonious than usual.
Stocks of several other commercially caught fish species, such as hake,
whiting, eel and plaice, are also close to or outside safe biological limits
in some sea areas, the ICES report concludes.
The council blames a method of catching fish using large pelagic, deep sea,
trawls that capture all marine life in their path for the sharp decline in
cod.
The pelagic fishery targets cod during the summer now, opening a whole new
season. The smaller trawling vessels that once dominated the cod fishery
targeted spawning cod in spring and juvenile cod in autumn and winter.
Europeans need only look across the North Atlantic to see what could be in
store for their cod fishery. In 1992, the collapse of the cod stocks off the
east coast of Newfoundland forced the Canadian government to close the
fishery. Over 40,000 people lost their jobs.
Once the most productive cod fishing area in the northwest Atlantic, the cod
fishery off southern Labrador and to the east of Newfoundland yielded an
estimated annual catch of 250,000 tons for more than 100 years before the
mid-1950s. From 1956, the small fishing vessels that had caught most of the
cod were supplanted by large factory fishing vessels.
>From then until the late 1970s, factory trawlers from Germany, Great
Britain, Spain and Portugal, Poland, the Soviet Union, Cuba and East Asia
had legally fished to within 12 miles of the eastern Canadian seaboard and
along the U.S. coast of New England.
Mates filet Atlantic Cod after a fishing trip to Georges Bank. (Photo by
Guliz Irtez-Gillis courtesy NOAA)
Concerned that the cod were being decimated, Canada and the United States
passed legislation in 1976 to extend their national jurisdictions over
marine living resources out to 200 nautical miles. The foreign factory
trawlers were relegated to the high seas.
But Canada's Atlantic offshore fishing fleet took over, and by the
mid-1980s, the Canadians were landing more than 250,000 tons of northern cod
annually. In 1992, the commercial limit of the Newfoundland cod was reached,
and Canada ordered the fishery closed.
The current state of the cod, and the failure of past measures to bring
fishing mortality down to rates that allow rebuilding, mean that more
stringent action is required for the North Sea, the Irish Sea, the waters
off Scotland, and the waters of the Skagerrak separating Denmark, Norway and
Sweden.
ICES scientists caution that any new management action taken to reduce
fishing mortality on adult cod in this area should not be offset by an
increase in the take of juvenile cod.
{ENDS Environment Daily contributed to this report. Environmental Data
Services Ltd, London online at: http://www.ends.co.uk }
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