The International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) is the organisation that provides scientific advice to the EU when deciding how much fishing is allowed each year. A new study from ICES shows that their calculation method may result in advice that implies a greater risk of excessive fishing pressure than previously thought.
Text: Arvid Wiclander Mellgren
The study compared ICES’s calculation model with a more accurate model to see how accurate the current model is. The results show that the current model gives a higher fishing mortality rate than the more accurate method. The researchers therefore conclude that ICES’s advice to the EU is generally too uncertain and may result in excessive fishing pressure in the long term. Massimiliano Cardinale is one of the researchers behind the study.
‘The current model is less cautious. It allows for higher fishing mortality than if you look more closely with the newer model,’ Massimiliano Cardinale tells Deep Sea Reporter.
In three of the four stocks studied by the researchers, the difference between the values obtained was also quite large. Massimiliano Cardinale believes that similar results would be seen if the comparison were made on other stocks. The ICES calculation model used today therefore generally causes more fishing than should be done.
The researchers behind the study believe that ICES’s current calculation model should be replaced with one that is more accurate. According to Massimiliano Cardinale, this is already being planned.
‘The process for a change is already underway. We have to do something quickly; we can’t wait. I guess it (the new model, editor’s note) will be up and running as early as next year,’ he says.
In addition, they have already used the more complex model for three stocks: herring in the central Baltic Sea and the Bothnian Sea, and north sea prawn. The fishing quotas set for these stocks earlier this year were therefore more accurately calculated than if ICES’s standard model had been used. Massimiliano Cardinale himself worked on the scientific basis for these stocks and ensured that the new model was used.
‘I was against using EQSIM (ICES’s standard model, editor’s note) from the outset,’ he says.
The study also shows that fishing would become more profitable in the long term with a lower fishing mortality rate than is currently targeted, despite the fact that quotas would decrease in the short term.
‘Stocks would increase, fisheries would catch roughly the same amount in the long run, and with less effort. In addition, fisheries would emit less carbon dioxide. Everyone would benefit‘, concludes the researcher.
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