As legally required by the European Union, sustainable fisheries may not extract more fish than can regrow each year. Yet, about 70 per cent of commercially targeted fish stocks in northern EU waters are either overfished, have shrunken population sizes or have collapsed entirely. So why does the EU continue to miss its sustainable fisheries targets, despite a wealth of scientific data and policy instruments? Researchers at GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel and Kiel University examined this question using the well-explored seas of northern Europe as a case study, with a particular focus on the western Baltic Sea. Their analysis is published in Science today.
“We analysed the problems and concluded that they are driven by short-sighted national calls for higher, unsustainable catches, compromising all levels of decision making,” says lead author Dr Rainer Froese, a fisheries scientist at GEOMAR. “Environmental factors such as warming waters and oxygen loss also play a role, but overfishing is so strong that it alone suffices to collapse stocks.” He adds: “We propose a new approach to EU fisheries management that would overcome the problems, be doable within existing legislation, and lead to profitable fisheries from healthy fish stocks within a few years.”
The European path to setting annual quotas
The EU’s Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) is based on the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which states that fish populations are to be maintained or restored to levels that can support maximum sustainable catches. In northern Europe, this is implemented through legally binding total allowable catches (TACs), which are advised scientifically by the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES), an intergovernmental organization with working groups consisting mostly of scientists from national fisheries institutions. Based on this advice, the European Commission proposes annual quotas, which are then discussed with member states and stakeholders. Ultimately, the Council of EU Fisheries Ministers decides on the legally binding total allowable catch for the following year. Unfortunately, this process often results in quotas that were increased at every step – with harmful consequences for fish stocks.
Mismanagement in the western Baltic Sea
The western Baltic Sea is a window into the dynamics between fish and fisheries – a relatively simple ecosystem for which extensive data are available, and which is fished solely under EU control.
“The western Baltic is dominated by three commercially important species: cod, herring and plaice,” explains Prof. Dr Thorsten Reusch, Head of the Marine Ecology Research Division at GEOMAR. “Long-standing overfishing of cod and herring has led to the recent collapse of these fisheries, whereas flatfish such as plaice, flounder and dab – which are less demanded and fished less intensively – have shown stable or even increasing stock sizes.” In 2022, overall, less than a tenth of what could have been sustainably caught from healthy stocks was actually landed. Reusch continues: “It’s the small-scale coastal fishers who are suffering the most, often without having done anything wrong, except perhaps relying on fishing associations that lobbied for unsustainable quotas.”
Systematic overestimation and phantom recoveries
In order to manage catches sustainably, the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) advises on how much fish of a given species of fish can be extracted annually without threatening the long-term viability of the stock.
However, ICES’s assessments repeatedly overpredicted stock sizes for the upcoming year for which sustainable catches were to be advised. These overly optimistic projections suggested that fish stocks were recovering and could support much higher catches, when, in reality, the stocks were stagnating or declining. “We’re talking about ‘phantom recoveries’,” says Froese, “recoveries that were predicted but never happened.”
The overfishing ratchet: when the system undermines its own goals
Building on the already too high ICES advice, the European Commission often proposed even higher catch limits, which the ministers in the EU Council usually approved, or sometimes increased further. As a result, official quotas permitted the capture of far more fish than the stocks could replenish. In some years even more than there were fish in the water. The authors call this process the ‘overfishing ratchet’: like a mechanical ratchet, it only turns in one direction. This process strongly favours higher catches at every step, leading to total allowable catches (TACs) that often exceed what fishers are able to catch.
As Froese notes: “Interestingly, actual catches often remained below these inflated quotas – simply because fishers stopped fishing when the cost of chasing the last fish exceeded the value of the catch.”
A new independent authority for ecosystem-based catch advice
The Common Fisheries Policy included an explicit deadline of 2020 to end overfishing – a goal that was clearly missed, as Thorsten Reusch points out. “Europe must play a leading role by making its own fisheries sustainable if it hopes to encourage other regions of the world to adopt sustainable fishing practices.” His appeal: “The EU must take its sustainability goals seriously and implement the CFP according to its stated objectives, urgently.”
To make the process more transparent and ensure accountability, the researchers propose creating a new politically independent institution with a clear mandate to provide robust scientific estimates of the highest sustainable annual catch for every stock, in line with ecosystem-based fisheries management (EBFM) principles. This would enable the EU to finally implement its own laws and effectively end overfishing.
Froese concludes: “To be successful, such an institution would need to operate with the same level of independence as a central bank.” He reiterates: “Implementing sound scientific advice can lead to highly profitable fisheries from large fish stocks in healthy European seas in many cases, and within a few years.”
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