Evaluation of Fishing Effort Regimes in European Waters - Part 1 (STECF-13-13). 17–21 June 2013, Copenhagen, Denmark
STECF EWG 13-06 notes that it has extensively addressed the ToR regarding the requested fishing effort regime evaluations in the
11. Eastern and Western Baltic,
12. the Kattegat,
13. the Skagerrak, North Sea, European waters in ICES Div.2 and the Eastern Channel,
14. to the West of Scotland,
15. Irish Sea,
16. Celtic Sea,
17. Atlantic waters off the Iberian Peninsula,
18. Western Channel,
19. Western Waters and Deep Sea
20. and the Bay of Biscay,
i.e. updated estimates of trends in fishing effort, landings and discards by species, CPUE and LPUE by fisheries and species, and partial fishing mortalities for effort regulated and non-regulated fisheries by Member States. Few ToR could not be accomplished due to time constraints and/or data deficiencies and will be accomplished during the forthcoming STECF EWG 13-13 fishing effort regime evaluations part 2 (7-11 October 2013, Barza d’Ispra, Italy). Outstanding ToRs are those dealing with the requested comparative analyses regarding cod and sole selectivity of fully documented fisheries (FDF) and fisheries not participating in FDF schemes, detailed evaluations of the national implementation as regards fishing effort derogations granted under the provisions of article 13 of the new cod plan (Counc. Reg. No 1342/2008), as well as spatio-temporal patterns in cod catchability.
STECF EWG 13-06 tasks have been supported by the DCF fishing effort data call in 2013. STECF EWG 13-06 notes a general improvement in data completeness and quality as well as compliance with dead lines regarding Member States’ data provisions. However, STECF EWG 13-06 suffered again
from delays, incompleteness and erroneous data submissions and re-submissions. Details about the DCF data call definitions, data quality in 2013 and significant shortfalls as identified by JRC and the experts contributing to the working group are summarized in section 4.
STECF EWG 13-06 notes that its recommendations in 2012 to amend the 2013 DCF data call to support fishing effort regime evaluation have been implemented and that these changes have supported and will support the accomplishment of specific ToR. STECF EWG 13-06 noted that the DCF data call in 2013 required re-submissions of re-aggregated data in addition to the re-quested data update for 2012, which implied additional workload for the national institutions involved in the DCF framework. Notably Denmark, Portugal and UK (without Scotland) have revised their complete time series of fisheries specific catch and effort data. Spanish data were made available for 2012 and discard data were inserted to earlier data submissions to support the effort regime evaluation for Southern hake and Nephrops.
STECF EWG 13-06 notes that ICES (WGMIXFISH 2013) has undertaken a detailed comparison of the 2011 ICES fisheries data received in 2013 and the 2011 STECF DCF effort data received and compiled in 2012. While the fisheries specific data on landings and nominal effort are found highly consistent, the ICES estimates of discards were consistently higher than the estimates of discards provided in the STECF data base. The pronounced differences in discard estimates are mainly due to different raising procedures applied and shall be further analysed in order to identify best and consistent practices applied to discard raising (section 4.12).
STECF EWG 13-06, in response to the general increased interest in discard estimates, has proposed an Index of Discard Coverage DQI to facilitate the use of the discard estimates provided in the STECF data bases on fisheries specific catch and fishing effort and obtained through the 2013 DCF data call. The DQI allows identification and avoidance of the use of discard estimates by fisheries based on the proportion of sums of national landings covered by discard estimates in relation to the overall sums of national landings. The method to derive the DQI and the interpretation of the results are provided in section 4.5 of the present report.
STECF EWG 13-06 notes that all resulting fisheries parameters of various fishing effort regimes are downloadable at the requested aggregation in the format of digital Appendixes to the present report at the working group’s web page: http://stecf.jrc.ec.europa.eu/web/stecf/ewg1306.
Major findings regarding the regional fishing effort regime evaluations as derived by STECF EWG 13-06 are summarized in the following sections, specifically for each of the reviews undertaken and covering new or additional ToR as appropriate.
Keyword(s)
common fisheries policy, conservation of fish stocks, evaluation of resources, fishery management, research report