Overfishing remains key threat to ocean health

June 10th, 2019

Overfishing remains the most significant threat to our ocean’s
health, experts told a conference in Cork City yesterday.

The Our Ocean Health event organised by BirdWatch Ireland heard that incremental progress had reformed the issue of overfishing compared to 10 years ago, but that most fish stocks remain exploited.

The event was organised to coincide with the Our Ocean Wealth summit with over 30 heads of state, as well as former US secretary of state John Kerry and Mary Robinson.

Fintan Kelly, policy officer for BirdWatch Ireland, said that
steady progress has changed the game since 2003 and needs to be ongoing to
ensure ocean’s health.

“Since 2003 fish biomass in the Northeast of Atlantic has increased
by 36 per cent,” Mr Kelly said. “Back then, 75 per cent of stocks were
overfished in the Northeast Atlantic, but now 40 per cent of stocks are
overfished.”

Mr Kelly added that although such improvements have been invariably highlighted “progress hasn’t been fast enough” and has not been consistent enough across all regions.  “A lot of progress that was made was between 2008 and 2013, and then it slowed down,” he added.

Michael Creed, Minister, Department of Agriculture, Food and Marine, Ireland
Photo: Aron Urb

Discarding Healthy Fish

Ciaran Kelly, a scientist with Marine Institute, highlighted the
issue of capturing unwanted stocks of fish that is later dumped into the
oceans, warning about its significant impact on driving fish species into
human-driven extinction.

Mr Kelly said “mitigation measures” must be strictly enforced “to
avoid capturing [unwanted] species in the first place”. He added that an ideal
outcome could be ensured only through active cooperation between fishers,
politicians and scientists.

Colm O Shúilleabháin of the International Fisheries Policy Unit at
the Department of Agriculture also told the conference that installing CCTV
cameras on fishing boats as a means of thwarting overfishing has proved
ineffective.

Stating that the issue is currently a matter of dispute among
European lawmakers, Mr O Shúilleabháin said that “slapping a camera on every single
boat” is not the solution, reasoning that technology could be more effectively
used to tackle the issue of overfishing.

 “In reality, who is going
to sit down for hours and look at these grainy pictures and figure out is that
a cod or an elephant?

But I think there is a role for remote electronic monitoring, and
that is where the debate is going, where you have sensors on fishing nets,” he
added.

Irish Overfishing

Ireland has the third highest rate of overfishing in Europe with
quotas coming in at more than 20 per cent above scientific advice, a new
EU-wide report recently found.

The annual Landing the Blame report from the London-based
NGO New Economics Foundation (NEF) analyses fishing quotas – or Total Allowable
Catches (TACs) – to see if they are set above scientific advice.

Fisheries ministers from all EU
member states meet every December
to set the TACs for Europe’s North East
Atlantic area fish stocks. The report found that EU member states will be
fishing 312,000 tonnes above scientific advice in 2019 despite an EU goal to
end overfishing by 2020.

Ireland’s then Agriculture and Marine Minister Simon Coveney negotiated the
largest proportional increase in fishing quotas in 2015, making the country’s
quotas exceeding scientific advice by 25 per cent.

A recent report by the New Economics Foundation (NEF), also recently warned that  Ireland’s continual push for higher quotas is “undermining efforts to end overfishing by 2020”.

About the Author

Shamim Malekmian

Shamim is a Senior Reporter at The Green News and a contributing writer to the Irish Examiner, Cork Evening Echo and the Dublin Inquirer.

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